Due to a recent decrease in enrollment and additional housing space found in other on-campus residence buildings, Oklahoma Christian University is in process of selling Tealridge Manor.
Tealridge was originally built in 1991 by Oklahoma Christian as an assisted living facility, but an influx in enrollment in 2013 caused the university’s administration to transition the establishment to additional college housing. The building currently houses 38 single undergraduate students, 20 graduate students and 10 married couples, as well as a handful of retired seniors who remained in residence despite the changes.
Details of the agreement and buyer information cannot be revealed until the sale is final, although Chief Analytics and Planning Officer Bill Goad said he expects the sale to be finalized by the end of the calendar year.
“It was a group that contacted us,” Goad said. “There’s actually an assisted living group next door and the entity that’s buying Tealridge is related to that group. So, they contact us and over time, we eventually came to the conclusion that we didn’t necessarily need it for student housing and from there, conversations continued. I don’t know exactly when the sale’s contract will close and the purchase will be completed, but it should probably be by the end of this calendar year.”
Students residing in Tealridge will be permitted to stay in their current apartments through the end of the school year. According to Goad, Oklahoma Christian’s administration remains certain there is enough room in the other on-campus apartment buildings to provide accommodations for those students next year.
“For our students, whatever the case, the rooms they are staying in will be available to them through the end of the school year,” Goad said. “Nobody in there will have to move out. We have a little over 1,700 beds total and we have about 1,400 students living on campus, and that’s even without the beds at Tealridge included in that count. That’s about a 75 percent capacity, so there’s plenty of room to grow even after the students who are currently living in Tealridge are reassigned next year to somewhere else on campus.”
While Oklahoma Christian does not yet have an official plan to accommodate the graduate students and married couples currently living in Tealridge, Director of Residence Life Candace Bass said there are many alternative living arrangements available to those students.
“Since graduate and married students are not required to live on campus, we do not have an immediate plan for on-campus housing for them,” Bass said. “There are several nearby apartment options, which many graduate and married students are already utilizing. Phase VI has often been reconfigured to accommodate the fluctuating male and female resident numbers. In the past, Phase VI has even been used for graduate or married housing. Depending on undergraduate housing needs, graduate and/or married housing could be considered in the future.”
Bass said the sale of Tealridge Manor will not hinder Oklahoma Christian’s mission to provide quality housing for all its students.
“Oklahoma Christian continues to be committed to providing a safe and positive experience for all residents,” Bass said. “The sale of Tealridge will not affect that commitment.”
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