Newberry College, a private, residential, and co-educational, college, has declared its designs to refurbish its Oakland Mill to build housing for its students and commercial rate apartments for others.
The mill building, which was constructed in 1912, will now locate the student housing section in around 40% area of the building, which will be completed for student occupation in August. The building placed around three tenth of a mile away from the main campus will incorporate 29 two and four bedroom suites, conference rooms, separate area for study and a game spot for the use of the students. The other 60% of the building, which is earmarked to build apartments for non-students, is anticipated to be ready by 2013.
West Electrical Contractors, who bought the building located over an area of 16 acres of land in downtown Newberry, did not demolish the old building instead the company has worked in liaison with the Newberry College, school district, and town and country officials to prepare and submit the plans for the approval of the National Department of the Interior. Initially, the proposal was rejected on the grounds that the new plan had requested for installing windows in the filled in gaps of the old building but was later accepted on an understanding of the essentialities of windows for a residential complex.
The converting of a mill space in to a residential locality necessitated the construction of new lighting, sidewalks, city street-scaping and landscaping. It also required the making of walking lanes and cycle tracks in addition to modernizing the closely located Oakland Park and reconstructing select number of single family homes in the location. It is anticipated that the new project when completed will fully develop at least one third of the Newberry town.
Source: http://www.newberry.edu/