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Moving day: Napa Valley College welcomes students to new on-campus housing complex

students walking into building

Nick Otto, Napa Valley Register

Move-in day for Napa Valley College’s $114 million student housing complex has arrived, and the chain-link construction fences that once enclosed the site feel like a distant memory. 

River Trail Village comprises three multistory buildings at the north end of NVC’s campus along Highway 221. 

Each building offers a different lifestyle — a residence hall that offers single and double rooms, a building with furnished apartments of varying sizes, and a building with unfurnished apartments designed for returning students, students with partners, or families.
Everything is new, from the smell of fresh white paint on the walls to the floor-length windows in the main community room that open up completely to create an open-air environment for residents.
 
Students began to trickle onto campus early Friday afternoon, checking with staff underneath an NVC-branded easy-up canopy and moving their belongings in with the help of large yellow bins on wheels.

Keana Daneshmand, 18, is one of the community college's newest arrivals. She and her mother Hayedeh Daneshmand played a light game of Ping-Pong in River Trail Village’s outdoor community space as they waited for their yellow bin to begin the move-in process.

Keana came up from Claremont in Southern California to NVC to play on their women’s volleyball team, and quickly fell in love with River Trail Village. 

“The campus is gorgeous, the housing … I already went into my room. It’s so nice,” she said.
 
For $1,500, she is sharing an apartment with three other women, two of them her volleyball teammates. They will share a kitchen, living room and two bathrooms. Daneshmand is sharing her room, but there’s a built-in wall divider to keep some sense of privacy. 

“I’m an extrovert, I love hanging out with people, but I’m an only child," she said of the arrangements. "So I would love to have some roommates — that’d be kind of cool.”

Monthly rent for each unit varies based on the kind of living situation students seek. According to River Trail Village’s website, the cost of a furnished, single-occupancy residence hall room is $1,278 a month. For a two-bedroom unfurnished apartment, which comes with a private bathroom, kitchen, living room and laundry area, the rent is $2,695.
 
Daneshmand's mother Hayedeh is an architect and appreciates the structure of the housing, but ultimately cares most about her daughter's happiness.

“I appreciate it for what it is,” Hayedeh said, “She told me exactly these words: ‘Mom, when I imagine living on my own, this is the kind of place I want to live.’”

Hayedeh thinks the cost is steep to share a room, but feels the experience Daneshmand will get with her fellow teammates is worth it. As a mother, Hayedeh has seen better days.
 
“I’ve been crying every day. Right now I’m trying to help her enjoy her moment,” Hayedeh said.

That moment has finally come for many other students. According to NVC’s director of housing operations Ashley Knapp, there are currently 107 leases signed, 35 on the way, and 175 applications to go through for the roughly 550 beds offered.

Move-in Emilio Diaz is occupying a single room in Building 3,  the village’s residence hall that most closely resembles traditional university housing.

Diaz, 18, moved from Cloverdale to NVC to play baseball and study business administration. He looked into the student housing and at Santa Rosa Junior College, but felt it was too close to home. He’s looking forward to building community, especially with his teammates.
 
“I heard almost every single one of them will be staying here," he said. "I have two (teammates) that are right next door, so it will be nice like that.”

As for other essential needs, Knapp said the college will not be providing meal plans but has been working on getting a food delivery system in place, is placing vending machines in common spaces, and has teamed with the college's basic needs center to help spread the word.

NVC's basic needs center gives away up to three bags of assorted groceries each month to students at NVC. 
Seeing the housing project finally open is a privilege for Robin Darcangelo, who is NVC's senior dean of student affairs and the college's lead on River Trail Village. Darcangelo spent five years working on the housing, from organizing focus groups to detailing construction plans.
 
“It’s emotional, because I’ve been in every thread of this project,” Darcangelo said. “I’m very fortunate and grateful to have people that are on task and know how important it is to complete projects on time.”

According to Darcangelo, NVC officials listened to state surveys that listed housing insecurity as one of the main challenges for college students. 

“Our board of trustees and our president supported the River Trail Village because it is aligned with the needs of our students across the state for housing insecurity, food insecurity and mental health,” she said. 

Darcangelo described the housing complex as move-in ready, although the three murals designed for each building aren’t quite finished yet. The last mural, inside Building 3, will be done in September. 

Resident assistants like Xavier Moreland, 18, moved in a couple of weeks before move-in day. Moreland came to NVC to pursue his dream of becoming a sommelier, and the new housing helped secure his decision.

“I needed a place to live, and I also wanted to have (access) to wine programs,” Moreland said. 
 
Having moved from Ohio to Los Angeles to Napa, Moreland feels a little numb to the transition, but became an RA to help foster community and help his fellow students.

“I’m looking forward to feeling like I am home, and I’m looking forward to making other people feel like it’s their home,” he said.

Students will continue moving in on the weekend before the fall semester begins Aug. 26, and a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the student housing will take place on Sept. 20. 

For more information, visit River Trail Village website


Read the original article at the Napa Valley Register.

Article written by Riley Palmer, Napa Valley Register

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