Full House at Wolf Ridge

Centennial Campus is no longer just a place for innovative collaboration and research. Thanks to the opening of the first 400 spaces at Wolf Ridge Apartments, it’s now a place students can call home.

And it’s quite unlike any residence hall on the 125-year-old grounds of the university, with a breathtaking view of the new Hunt Library, its own state-of-the-industry dining hall and a pending Silver LEED certification that makes the new living quarters one of the greenest place on campus to wear red.

It’s the first student housing ever built in the 25 years of Centennial Campus and the first new living quarters on campus in nearly a decade. Every unit – from the four-bedroom apartments to the single-person lofts – has solid-surface counters and stainless-steel appliances. Each bedroom has a height-adjustable bed that adds storage space for each resident.

Modern Décor

The modern décor includes furniture chosen by campus residents and every amenity a research-intensive graduate student could imagine.

A gym? Check.

An outpost for the Student Supply Store? On its way in September.

An LED-lit tower that mimics the lighting of the venerable Belltower on main campus? You got it.

Some apartments have private balconies, while those that don’t have slightly more living space. Access to all rooms is student-ID activated, providing security for all residents.

There are common laundry rooms with high-efficiency, front-loading washers and dryers; a rooftop garden covered in purple-flowering sedum plants and a 50,000-gallon cistern buried in a common courtyard to collect air conditioner condensation and rooftop runoff to irrigate the grounds around the complex.

One part of the first floor is occupied by On The Oval Culinary Creations, University Dining’s newest upscale eatery, including four micro restaurants and an early-morning/late-night diner that provides options around the clock.

Location, Location, Location

Like all high-end real estate, Wolf Ridge is enhanced by its excellent location. It’s on the backstretch of the Centennial Campus Oval, which includes the three College of Engineering Buildings on one rounded end, the highly acclaimed Hunt Library on the other end and more than two acres of manicured grass crisscrossed by sidewalks.

The newest rooms are located in Lakeview and Tower halls, the first of the six-building complex, with an additional 800 spaces in the four new halls that are slated to open by the start of the 2014-15 academic year. In all, 1,195 graduate and undergraduate students will call Wolf Ridge home.

When all six halls are fully occupied, NC State will have space for more than 10,000 students in campus housing, which equates to nearly half of its undergraduate enrollment. That places NC State fifth among its 17 peer institutions.

While housing is not limited to engineering or textile students—two of the primary disciplines located entirely on Centennial Campus—the new apartments are available only to sophomore or older students, just like 1,208 spaces units at Wolf Village Apartments off Gorman Street, which opened in 2003 and were completed in 2005.

About 15 percent of the Wolf Ridge occupants are graduate students, who are eligible to rent the top-floor, one-bed loft apartments.

Students began moving in on Aug. 1, and all apartments were occupied when the fall semester began on Aug. 21.

“Demand is already very high,” says Susan Grant, director of University Housing. “In fact, all of the beds in Wolf Ridge have been assigned for this academic year and there is a currently a waiting list.”