Often, it’s not easy to find volunteers to help move.
But Megan Heppner had plenty of help moving her stuff from Olathe to Wichita for the start of the fall semester. Her family was eager to get a look at The Flats, Wichita State’s new on-campus residence hall.
“They all wanted to move me down,” Heppner said, laughing. “It turned into a family thing.”
Saturday was the big move-in day at The Flats, a privately built apartment complex that is being leased to the university, which will run it like a residence hall. More than 300 students who were slated to live in Fairmount Towers are moving into The Flats instead because the university plans to tear down the againg dorm at 21st and Hillside.
The Flats, originally meant for upper-level students, will largely be home to freshmen, sophomores and transfer students in its first year.
Heppner is one of them. She’s transferring from Johnson County Community College.
She had originally found housing at Fairmount Towers before being informed she was being moved to The Flats.
“I’m super-excited,” Heppner said, beaming outside her room with four roommates. “I feel like a freshman all over again.”
The rooms feature their own kitchens, washers and dryers, and common space with a television and furniture.
“I’m a little jealous,” Jenny Mora, a Housing and Residence Life official for the university, said as she showed off one of the large closets in a room. “I have a walk-in (closet) and it’s not this size. They have a great amount of storage space.”
University officials say the trade-off improves the quality and location of housing overall and takes out of rotation an aging, less-popular building that they had long intended to close.
While she was slated to have her own room at Fairmount Towers, Heppner wasn’t complaining about the change on Saturday.
“I’m really happy I’m over here,” she said.
The pool and shuffleboard tables were already getting use, along with the kitchen on the first floor.
“It’s pretty nice,” David Ozinga, a freshman from Norman, Okla., said while he was shooting pool with Conner Mong from Beloit. “The beach volleyball court is amazing.”
That’s next to the wading pool, which can be seen from the surrounding patios and balconies.
Vivian Lohe, who is among those moving from Fairmount Towers, said the difference is like night and day.
“This is way better,” Lohe said of The Flats.
Nearly 350 of the 400 residents scheduled to move in had arrived by early Saturday afternoon, said Maria Thompson, associate director for residence life.
Contractors were on site to handle any issues, she said, but so far those were limited to hot water not working at a couple of apartments and problems with keys.
Some of those instances, Mora said, were simply students using the wrong keys. But that was no real surprise. It’s the first day in a new residence hall.
Stan Finger: 316-268-6437, @StanFinger
This story was originally published August 19, 2017 5:30 PM.