Elite Concepts at the Valley, a new housing community for Mississippi Valley State University faculty, staff and nontraditional students, fills a need by giving people a place to live.
But Roosevelt Sanders believes it can do more than that.
Sanders is executive director of the Valley Community Development Corporation, which has been overseeing the property.
The 10-building complex on Sunflower Road includes 216 units of various sizes totaling 504 beds - "a nice small community," Sanders calls it.
And that community of three-story buildings is sure to draw the attention of people driving by on U.S. 82, he said.
"At night, you're driving along, and you say, 'What is that sitting over there with all the lights?'" he said.
He expects it will interest the parents of Valley students who want to see where their sons and daughters live. If the parents happen to be entrepreneurs and they like the Delta's open spaces, they might become interested in locating here, he said.
Adding high-quality housing "enhances everybody, from taxes for the elected officials, to investment for people who have money, to other people when they come," he said.
Elite Concepts, which opened earlier this month, includes a mix of one-bedroom, two-bedroom and three-bedroom units. The buildings sit on 13.5 acres, part of 60 acres owned by Valley CDC.
The complex now has about 80 residents, and about 57 of its units are occupied, said Deary Hill, the general manager.
Any faculty or staff member on the university payroll may live at Elite Concepts. But students wanting to live there must fall into one of these categories:
- "Non-traditional" students - that is, freshman 21 or older, sophomores 22 or older, juniors 23 or older or seniors 24 and older;
- Single parents whose children live with them full-time.
Nontraditional students now occupy a greater percentage of Valley's enrollment than they do at any other university in the state.
People of different age groups and family circumstances have different needs, Sanders said.
"Sometimes you have a freshman that might be 40 or 50 years old," he said. "Of course, they don't want to live in a dormitory."
Valley CDC has contracted with Campus Advantage, a company based in Austin, Texas, to manage the property. Once the faculty/staff buildings are turned over to Campus Advantage, the company will run the entire property's day-to-day operations.
Hill was hired to manage Elite Concepts and has the authority to hire all staff. He managed Campus Advantage facilities at Prairie View A&M University and at Langston University in Oklahoma.
Hill, a native of Florida, said the people at MVSU had been "nothing but helpful" so far and he was glad to be back in this part of the country.
"I'm used to Southern hospitality," he said.
He also said Elite Concepts has attracted a good first group of tenants. The university checks students' disciplinary records and academic standing to determine who may live there, and "the screening process is very thorough," he said.
The university's enrollment is expected to take another big jump this fall, and "hopefully that's going to get a lot of students to be down here," he said.
Sanders said all of the units are ready to be inhabited, although some don't have furniture yet. There have been no major problems in construction, and "everything has come to fruition the way that it was scheduled," he said.
The site will have a guard shack with card-swiping stations for its tenants. Those who don't have cards will have to be let in by a resident.
Making the units available at the beginning of a semester presented an odd timing situation, because students usually have settled on housing by then, Sanders said. But that just happened to be the way construction progressed.
"We can at least have this time to make sure that everything is tiptop and running according to the way property should run by the time that we're ready for them to be leased up," he said.
Then, as the word gets out, they can bring in more tenants through the spring and summer.
Sanders, who was born and raised in Greenville, graduated from MVSU in 1971 with a degree in social science. He later spent about 15 years at the university's Center for Economic Development and also has experience in teaching, banking and consulting.
After leaving the UCED, he became executive director of the Enterprise Community Corp. nonprofit in Jackson. Later he owned Delta Business Association, a development operation designed to help small businesses. Then he served as executive director of the Mid-South Promise Partnership, a program for youth patterned after America's Promise, which is chaired by Colin Powell.
With his ties to this region and his business experience, Sanders has a sense of the Delta's needs in commercial development, housing and other areas.
"Everything that you can think of is needed in this area, when it comes to economic development and economic growth," he said.
