University community, local residents discuss conflicts as student enrollment grows
Chapman’s enrollment growth causes tension with Old Towne Orange residents as the community’s historic roots clash with university attempts to expand and modernize.
As Chapman looks to increase student enrollment to 10,500 on the Orange campus, residents and university representatives discuss how Chapman’s relationship with the community has shifted and addressed issues such as lacking housing, parking and noise complaints. Graphic by HARRY LADA, Art Director
Old Towne Orange is one of the oldest areas in Orange County, showcasing a long history through its unique architectural styles and 1,300 historic buildings.
The humble suburb offers vintage sights that date back to 1869, when attorneys Alfred Chapman and Andrew Glassell acquired 1,385 acres of land as legal fees and planned a city. Dubbed “the Circle” by locals, the heart of the town is the one-square-mile Orange Plaza, which is centered around a traffic circle and surrounded by small businesses.
The Plaza, also known as the Circle, was a hub for Orange residents even in the 1920s. Photo courtesy of Orange County Archives
Chapman University looms in the middle of Old Towne, bringing modern changes and thousands of students each year to the city. What might have remained a secret to only local citizens who knew the joys of Old Towne can now be enjoyed — or some might say exploited — by tourists, students and their families who come to visit.
“It’s kind of like siblings; 80% of the time you love them, especially when they’re little, but the other 15% or 20% (of the time) you want to kill them,” Tony Trabucco, who serves as the preservation co-chair of the Old Towne Preservation, told The Panther in a March 11 interview. “That’s how I think the relationship with Chapman and the city is. We have a symbiotic relationship most of the time, but there’s going to be points where we bump heads.”
In 1954, Chapman College bought Orange Union High School's campus grounds and moved from Los Angeles to Orange, where the university stands today.
It wasn’t until 1991 that Chapman College became Chapman University. As student enrollment grows and Old Towne Orange welcomes more and more residents and visitors each year, a question arises: is Orange becoming a college town?
This dynamic between modernization and maintaining the area’s historic roots has created a unique balancing act in the city. While some residents argue that Chapman’s development and growth has continued to help the city grow throughout the years, older residents reminisce on what used to be a small, sleepy town that may have disappeared forever.
Chapman enrollment expands, increasing housing demands
Chapman’s student enrollment has increased steadily since its inception. Over the past 20 years, the enrollment has almost doubled, jumping from 6,275 total students in 2003 to 10,001 this year. However, this year’s number refers to all undergraduates and graduate students across the Orange and Rinker Health Science Campus in Irvine, which opened in 2013.
Alisa Driscoll, the vice president of Community Relations, told The Panther in a March 11 interview that the university is planning to increase student enrollment over the next 10 to 15 years to include approximately 10,500 students at the Orange campus alone.
Additionally, Chapman is planning to house 50% of this 10,500 student goal — including all freshmen and sophomores — in residence life communities. Although COVID-19 has posed a unique challenge regarding housing in the past few years, Driscoll said the university is committed to maintaining its 50% housing goal pending health and safety restrictions allow.
“(The housing commitment is) an important commitment that we’re proud of,” Driscoll said. “We were able to build The K (Residence Hall and) we acquired Chapman Grand (Apartments), and adding those two units pretty quickly in tandem with each other really made a huge impact on the number of students who were living in the community. I think that that can bring a huge asset to that discussion.”
However, Chapman doesn’t currently have the housing capacity to meet this housing goal. According to Dave Sundby — the director of Residence Life and First Year Experience — the university’s current functional capacity is 3,675 occupants. This is the number the department treats as the maximum for student housing for the upcoming year.
To house 5,250 students on campus, Chapman will have to invest in new housing developments in the Orange area or on campus. One opportunity for expansion is Panther Village.
In 2016, the Orange City Council approved the sale of a property near Panther Village to Chapman for $6.5 million in order to build more student housing. This expansion was originally slated to occur within two to three years after the purchase, but the project was halted when Chapman purchased the Chapman Grand Apartments in 2017 for $150 million.
Harold Hewitt, executive vice president and chief operating officer for the university, told The Panther in a March 2021 email response that Chapman was at borrowing capacity after purchasing Chapman Grand and was waiting for funding to proceed with the Panther Village expansion.
In a follow-up email from March 2022, Hewitt said that the Board of Trustees issued bonds before inflation started driving up interest rates — meaning funding has been acquired — but no other plans have been revealed at this time.
“Chapman is examining a few alternatives for our next new student housing project including, as one option, new construction at Panther Village,” Hewitt wrote in a March 29 email to The Panther. “However, we have not reached a final decision, and at this time, I can’t say when we will … The bond proceeds are being invested by the Investment Committee of the Board of Trustees to cover the annual debt service until final decisions about the project are made.”
Trabucco, a former president for OTPA, said that housing is the largest concern when analyzing Chapman’s relationship with the community.
Trabucco has lived in Orange for 27 years, said he’s noticed pushback from the community every time the university has expanded.
“We all know that lady that has too many cats; one cat is good, two cats are probably okay, three cats are still probably okay, but at some point, you have too many cats,” Trabucco said, comparing the metaphor to students at Chapman. “Who knows what that number is; I think it’s the same with the students. If Chapman housed 75% to 85% of their students, that number would be less of an issue.”
Since many Chapman students live in surrounding neighborhoods, residents are often faced with issues including noise complaints, parking issues and property maintenance.
Traditional roots vs. modern growth
Dean Collins — an Orange resident with a long family history in the city — spent more than a year living adjacent to a house occupied by members of Chapman’s Phi Delta Theta chapter.
Collins felt forced to call the Orange Police Department on numerous occasions after noisy parties and parking problems began affecting his quality of life on a regular basis. After a story from The Panther was published highlighting his concerns, Collins said Chapman representatives addressed the problem immediately and the students moved out shortly after.
Now, Collins said he is enjoying his home for the first time in nine years. In an interview with The Panther March 16, he was sitting in the quiet of his backyard.
Chapman purchased Orange Union High School in 1954 in order to build Chapman College, and the university still stands there today. Photo courtesy of Chapman University Digital Commons
Collins' family has been in the City of Orange for over 100 years. His family home was built when there was still a dirt road out in front and his grandfather owned a local orchard. Further, Collins' grandmother graduated from Orange Union High School in 1932, 22 years before Chapman purchased the school to build Chapman College.
“I remember when I was a kid, there weren't very many houses around here,” Collins said. “If you heard a car, they were either lost or they were coming to visit because there was nothing here.”
Collins described a dynamic between two strong contrasting forces brewing in the community: preserving historical elements of Old Towne Orange and the threat of modernization from Chapman.
“The expansion of the school is one of those things where rapid growth has growing pains,” Collins said. “For the most part, as long as everyone respects each other and (is courteous) and things like that, all the people get along just fine. They keep expanding and purchasing more property, but at least they are working laterally or away from where the Plaza is.”
Collins described how he enjoys living in a city with a successful university, but many long-term residents view Chapman’s expansion with a more critical eye.
“It feels like the college has taken over the town, and it's turning into a college town,” Collins said. “The older people that I know, they just feel that (Chapman) is getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and it's being allowed to do that uncontrollably, even though I know it's different than that.”
Chapman College changed to Chapman University in 1991. Photo courtesy of Chapman University Digital Commons
Trabucco described that Chapman has done a good job preserving historic areas of the city, but said it’s important to be diligent as the university toes the line between tradition and modernized expansion.
“As residents, we have to always sleep with one eye open with regard to what comes next,” Trabucco said. “There’s a lot of positive influences … but you have to balance that with what the expansion of the university has done to the overall quality of life in what was a sleepy little town many years ago.”
State mandates exacerbate housing issues
Accessory dwelling units (ADUs), also commonly called granny flats, are secondary homes built on the site with a larger house. Common uses for ADUs include housing aging family members or rental properties.
In California, ADUs were originally intended to address housing shortages and increase affordability. However, in Orange, developers have started taking advantage of ADU state mandates to increase profits and rent to Chapman students.
Developers and realtors have been purchasing homes and adding multiple bedrooms and bathrooms in order to appeal to local college students. These structures result in up to 10 students living in the same home without sufficient parking to accommodate their vehicles.
Although the Orange City Council added restrictions to ADUs in March 2021 in an attempt to diminish these “dorm-like” structures, these changes don’t prohibit ADUs in the city.
“It’s made our community attractive to developers and investors whose goal is to make a quick buck,” Trabucco told The Panther. “That’s torn at the fabric of our little community. The owners live out of the area, and they’re just interested in collecting a rent check.”
However, Chapman students living in ADUs isn’t a problem the university has a say over.
“We understand that the ADU situation has been a very impactful one in the community,” Driscoll said. “The ADU situation is difficult. I think when the legislation was passed at the state level, it was really a fantastic way to look at housing availability and how to make various options available for those who might be housing insecure. I think what we’re seeing at the local level and what we’re seeing in practice are some of those impacts.”
Further, Senate Bill 9 — also known as the California Housing Opportunity and More Efficiency (HOME) Act — is a state bill that requires cities to allow one additional residential unit, like an ADU, onto properties zoned for single-dwelling homes.
SB 9 went into effect January 2022 and has been met with great criticism from city officials like Orange Mayor Mark Murphy, who argues specific housing decisions should be left up to local governments.
“Anytime the state says, ‘One size fits all,’ it doesn't fit anybody,” Murphy told The Panther in an interview March 16. “Losing the local control of the city (and) having some ability to say, ‘Yes, that's okay. That fits our neighborhood’ or ‘No, it doesn't,’ that's problematic. That's why we’ve done the things we’ve done to slow down the bill and to put as many controls as we legally can on what is built.”
Chapman attempts to address concerns
Before 2016, Chapman had no effective communication to receive resident input. Therefore, when the community relations department was created, the university finally had a method to field feedback and complaints from local community members.
“Prior to our existence, we had a lot of complaints from neighbors who would say, ‘I would report something to the university and never hear back,’ or ‘There’s no one here to help me’ or ‘It feels like no one cares about my opinion, and Chapman does whatever it wants,’” Driscoll said. “By creating these open avenues for communication, we’ve been able to address a lot of those issues and make sure people feel heard, and I think that’s a huge aspect.”
Murphy said the creation of Chapman’s community relations office was a major turning point for the city and university to work together toward a common goal.
“I think Orange and the university have collectively worked to improve each and every time something has been brought forward.”
Old Towne Orange in the 1930s featured many architectural structures that still stand today. Photo courtesy of Orange County Archives
“There are always growing pains in neighborhood-related issues. I think the university has improved dramatically in addressing those local concerns” Murphy said.
Community relations have been especially relevant lately after a controversy with residents and the University of California, Berkeley. Community members argued that the steadily increasing student population would worsen the local housing shortage and increase rent prices for residents in the area.
After a back-and-forth legal argument between the university community members over student enrollment, the California State Legislature overturned a ruling from the California Supreme Court in an emergency decision that reversed a potential enrollment cap, arguing the maximum number of students should have the opportunity to attend the university.
The California Supreme Court had originally sided with Berkeley residents, saying the university must decrease its student enrollment by 3,000 for the fall 2023 semester. The enrollment would have had to freeze at approximately 42,000 students for UC Berkeley, which already has an 18% acceptance rate.
The decision reversal prevents the enrollment cap from being implemented for the upcoming 2023-2024 school year.
For Collins, an enrollment cap doesn’t seem like a clear-cut resolution for concerns arising from students in the Chapman area.
“Who knows where the cap is on how many students there should be,” Collins said. “If it’s managed properly, you don’t need to set a cap on that … If they can accommodate that and still keep the relationship, why do we have to have a number? The whole thing is, how are you going to go about doing (increasing student enrollment), and is it feasible in the community?”
OTPA is hosting an event April 14 — the 6th annual State of Old Towne Orange Forum — discussing local issues in the city, including ADU affordable housing, Chapman expansion, parking and other issues facing the City of Orange.
Featured panelists include Murphy, Driscoll, council member Arianna Barrios, City Manager Rob Houston and Police Chief Dan Adams.