OSU-Cascades on Thursday announced plans intended to address fears over how an influx of college students may change the character of Bend’s residential areas.

The university offered two main strategies at minimizing any negative impact its students may have on neighborhoods — keeping students out of residential areas and making sure those who live off campus are held to a behavioral standard. The focal point of the university’s plans is to require freshmen to live on campus, while granting an exemption to students whose families have homes in the area.

Before being adopted, the ideas were drafted by the university’s Campus Expansion Advisory Committee’s housing subcommittee, which features university employees, city staff and 11 community members. That subcommittee and others have been charged with planning for the university’s new four-year campus, which will be on a 10-acre parcel on Bend’s west side. Plans call for an opening date of fall 2016, but earlier land use challenges pushed the date back from fall 2015, and further challenges are possible.

According to Kelly Sparks, associate vice president for finance and strategic planning, the university will have room to house 300 students in its planned dormitory, representing about 16 percent of the projected maximum student population of 1,900.

“One thousand students are already living in the community today, so over 30 percent of the new students who will eventually come to the 10-acre campus will be able to live on campus,” Sparks said at a meeting of the Campus Expansion Advisory Committee on Thursday.

The university also plans to educate students on their responsibilities should they choose to live off campus, touching on subjects such as noise regulations and snow-shoveling duties. Policies that apply to students living in the dormitory will also be applied to those living elsewhere, and the university plans to streamline the process for community complaints.

The university did not accept a recommendation from the housing subcommittee to require sophomores to live on campus, arguing it would be more effective to attract sophomores to live on campus than to mandate it.

“We’d like to focus on the incentives, and we think we would be more successful that way than arguing over who qualifies for an exemption,” Sparks said.

Sparks also noted the university hopes in the long term to house 40 percent of students in dormitories, but for that to happen the campus will have to expand beyond its initial 10-acre footprint.

Bill Bernardy, a community member on the housing subcommittee, said across the country 40 percent of public university students live on campus, but in Oregon, the number is lower.

“It’s mostly a funding issue,” he said.

To offset a limited number of initial dormitory rooms, the university plans to work with developers to designate “university-affiliated” housing off campus, though Sparks said the legal challenges over the campus have discouraged developers from beginning construction before the campus opens.

“There continues to be interest, but with the delays, no one’s interested in taking the risk of getting housing up by 2016,” she said.

— Reporter: 541-633-2160, tleeds@bendbulletin.com