Downtown and community leaders celebrated a groundbreaking Saturday morning for The Regents at 1212, a new graduate student housing complex on Ninth Street and Avenue L.

The $40 million apartment complex for residents 21 and older will have 225 rooms, a courtyard and parking garage.

The project is being privately developed by NCM Developments, but is a collaborative effort with the City of Lubbock, Texas Tech University, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, NOVI Development and the Lubbock Downtown Development Corp. Board.

Graduate student housing has been a part of downtown development talks for years.

Texas Tech University System Chancellor Tedd Mitchell said at the groundbreaking there is a need for housing that better fits graduate students’ needs. These students are older, and sometimes have families and other different needs.

In the fall of 2018, there were 3,845 students enrolled at the TTUHSC Lubbock campus. There are 6,645 graduate and law students at Texas Tech in the fall of 2019, according to institutional data.

Mitchell said students will be accepted to a graduate program at Texas Tech or the TTUHSC, then ask where everyone lives. The school can point them in the direction of appropriate complexes and neighborhoods, but having a specific complex where students can create a community will benefit all, Mitchell said.

"Having an area where they can hang out together and study together, what it does, it keeps their environment safe and has them gel socially," Mitchell said. "Later on, 10 years down the road, 20 years down the road, when they think about their days at the Health Sciences Center or at Tech, they think back on it fondly."

Housing is one of multiple downtown development phases, said David Alderson, chairman of the Lubbock Downtown Development Corp. Getting people to live in the area is one step toward other developments, like adding businesses.

Other housing projects that will see movement soon include affordable-housing Metro Lofts in the current NTS Building and senior-resident complex Guadalupe Villas.