When Roderick Smothers took over as president of Philander Smith College in Little Rock, he prayed for divine intervention.
Directed by the college's board of trustees to stabilize its enrollment of 500 students, he found comfort in the Old Testament. "The Lord has plans to prosper you," he said, citing Jeremiah 29:11.
A year and a half later, his cup runneth over.
Through greater outreach to high schools, the college's student body has grown for a second straight year to roughly 750 students. But the school budgeted for only 650, forcing it to house 75 to 80 upperclassmen at the La Quinta Inn & Suites in downtown Little Rock since August.
The college got some relief from the housing crunch Tuesday when the Little Rock Board of Directors unanimously approved a proposal from the college to place six multisectional manufactured homes on a vacant lot it owns at West 16th and Chester streets.
The decision came only after some discussion, however.
Ward 1 City Director Erma Hendrix and some members of the local community said there had been little outreach or advance notice given about the plans, with some finding out about the proposed housing through a notice in their mail.
The vacant lot is in the Paul Laurence Dunbar School Neighborhood Historic District. The neighborhood was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013.
Smothers said rumors about "a trailer park" going into the historic neighborhood were untrue.
"Philander Smith is associated with quality," Smothers said.
A college representative displayed a posterboard showing a rendering of the proposed homes. It showed a home with a pitched roof and a long front porch, which satisfied the directors and residents who were concerned about the project.
"When you say pre-fab, red flags start going up all over the place," Ward 6 City Director Doris Wright said. "I'm glad to see visually these will be something the community can be proud of, glad to know you've got security, and glad [the students will] be out of that hotel."
Smothers thanked the directors and promised that he would reach out to the community first in the future, with his first call going to Hendrix.
Hendrix supported the project but had one quibble with its presentation: "I was looking for you to read from the New Testament. I live by the New Testament."
Each manufactured home has six rooms, with options for single or double occupancy, Smothers said. The additional housing will be enough to accommodate the students currently living in the motels, he said. A few students may eventually move into on-campus housing that will free up when some students leave school because of grades or finances.
The plan is to relocate the students in the motels within 45 days, Smothers said. The residential area will house upperclassmen and will be called "Panther Village." The project is projected to cost $1.2 million.
The units will be placed in a horseshoe shape with a lawn in the middle, Smothers said. The university will install sidewalks, lighting and a gravel driveway for parking. It will also erect a wrought-iron fence around the perimeter of the lot, which is across from the Dunbar Community Center on one side and Bethel AME church on the other. Campus security officers will monitor the site 24 hours a day, he said.
The units must be removed from the lot by June 1, 2018, after which the college plans to sell them, Smothers said.
The school plans to continue to add to its enrollment and to raise money to build new dormitories on campus in the spring of 2018, Smothers said.
The U.S. Department of Education offers low-interest loans to finance capital improvement projects at historically black colleges and universities, which Smothers said the school would seek to obtain. The proposed buildings would house between 120 and 140 students, he said.
The college eventually plans to develop the vacant lot where the manufactured homes will be, Smothers said. The lot was given to the college several years ago by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, he said.
Metro on 09/08/2016