Allen Community College officials, Ron and Kristin Ballard and family and others in the community celebrated the Ballards’ donation to the college Wednesday, in the form of a new student housing complex.
The small dormitory, now known as The Ballard House, was the former home of the Resource Center for Independent Living and a couple of other businesses, after Kristin Ballard built the facility in 2008.
“We’d been trying to decide what to do with it,” she said. “We thought this was something we could do.”
Officially, the Ballards donated the building to the college’s Endowment Association, which in turn sold it to the college to help alleviate ACC’s ongoing student housing crunch.
The Ballard House will hold eight students and a college staffer.
After some consideration, college officials agreed the home would be best suited for the Red Devil baseball team, ACC President John Masterson said. An assistant coach will room with the students as well.
“We were extremely honored to receive this gift,” Masterson said.
The structure was built shortly after the 2007 flood in order to give RCIL a new home, Kristen Ballard explained.
THE single-story structure was built at 726 Patterson St. — just west of the American Legion — in early 2008 after RCIL lost its old office along South State Street in the 2007 flood.
After RCIL — which works to find ways for individuals with disabilities to continue to live independently — moved a few years later, the Ballards continued to search for a long-term tenant.
When none was found, they decided to donate it to the college.
They approached ACC officials about a year ago, Masterson said.
“It was incredibly easy converting this into student housing,” Masterson said, noting the building, quite obviously, was already fully ADA compliant.
“We just added some showers to the already spacious restrooms, and added a hot water tank,” Masterson said.
The building also was fully equipped with a fire suppression (sprinkler) system, and easily met all fire codes.
The only potential qualm — the building’s remote location on the west edge of town — was answered when the college decided to put an assistant coach in the facility as well, Masterson noted.
NOW COMES the hard part, Masterson joked: deciding which students will stay in the dorm.
“I imagine there’s going to be quite a few students who want to live there,” he chuckled.
Fall semester classes begin at the college Aug. 21.
