By David McCabe

The College is examining the possibility of constructing new housing for faculty and staff on two properties in the Village.

The first property, east of the Gambier Child Care Center on Meadow Lane, has been owned by the College for about 10 years. The second, on Wiggin Street, was purchased this year with the sale going through just last week.

“We are assessing the possibility of using the Meadow Lane property and the Wiggin Street property to develop additional faculty and staff housing options within the Village,” Chief Business Officer Mark Kohlman wrote in an email.

Despite Kenyon’s open campus and rural location, some faculty and staff members ﾗ particularly those looking to rent ﾗ feel there is a lack of housing options in the Village. “There are not a lot of rental options in the Village, so anything that could help to expand the rental options would be great for people who want to stay in the Village as opposed to living a bit further away from campus,” President Sean Decatur said. “We have a number of faculty and staff who would be interested in renting an apartment in the Village if there just were any.”

Currently, the College rents the McIlvaine Apartments, by North Campus, to faculty and staff members. But the apartments are in varying states of disrepair, and demand far outstrips supply.

Decatur said conversations around housing in the Village will be part of an upcoming reappraisal of the College’s master plan, which was initially made nine years ago. The review, he said, will not only tackle several ongoing questions that were part of the original planning process but also reflect the recent building the College has done.

“Housing for faculty and staff is one of [the issues that will be addressed in the review]; the questions about the Village and sort of development in the Village and what makes sense to be in the Village or not in the Village is another,” he said. “Those are things that, once that master plan process is done, we might have more information to then think about what we would do with this new piece of land that’s on the edge of the Village.”

But Decatur cautioned that currently, any conversation about faculty housing is just that ﾗ a conversation. “Right now they’re very speculative and vague,” he said.

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