MILLIGAN COLLEGE — Buffalo Mountain dominates the view looking southwest from Milligan College’s new housing village.
Bill Greer, president of Milligan, said that view is what students in many rooms at the new housing village will see each day they awake.
“The views from up there are spectacular,” Greer said shortly before giving a tour of one of the buildings in the village to local media Thursday morning.
The first phase of the new Milligan Housing Village is nearing completion. Ground was broken on the village in summer 2012.
Ninety students will move into the five buildings that comprise the village in August.
“The housing village has been something that we have worked on for a number of years,” Greer said, complementing the late Don Jeanes, 14th president of Milligan whose vision it was to create more living space on campus.
One of the buildings in the village is named for Jeanes and his wife Clarinda.
“That village will ultimately be 12 new residence halls,” Greer said. “We’re building five of them right now that will be open in time for students to move into this fall.”
Each building will have suites that have five private rooms.
An intramural field, a sand volleyball court, laundry facilities and a community room for parties and such will all be included in the new village.
But work is going on at more than just the dorms at Milligan.
Greer took the opportunity Thursday to show off renovations to the McMahan Student Center. This building has long been home to a student grill and a lounge area with a fireplace. Since school let out, it has been renovated into one room to provide a larger space for relaxation, Greer said.
The new space is now called the Fireside Lounge, and has an increased menu, which includes Starbucks items.
The front porch, courtyard and front steps at Milligan’s Hart Hall are being redone and will tie in with the new housing village sidewalk to create a well-connected residential area.
“The summers at Milligan are always very, very busy because we use this time for a couple of things,” Greer said. “One is to clean up and fix up and repair and do a lot of maintenance that we can’t do when the campus is full of kids who are scurrying around everywhere.
“But we also generally try to do whatever campus improvements that we want to do to help us grow, to help improve the campus environment. And one of the goals at Milligan is to ensure that we’re providing the very best student experience that we can provide for our students.”See a gallery of photos showing Milligan projects below.