Approaching a landmark population of 100,000, the once completely rural town of College Station continues to grow into a thriving and booming community.
The city of College Station has consistently been close to approaching the 100,000 people mark, but recent growth shows the milestone could be reached in the next 2-3 months.
According to the most recent census collected in 2010 by the United States Census Bureau, College Station’s population sat at 93,857 people.
Morgan Hester, staff planner in the Planning and Development Services Department of College Station, said the actual population count is not always able to be exactly reflected due to the number of “outstanding” temporary Residential Certificate of Occupancies (COs) given to certain building and complexes.
“The Cottages opened last year and were issued temporary COs, so those numbers haven’t been fully accounted for even though they’ve been living there a year,” Hester said.
The population total is determined by the national average household size (2.38) provided by the Census Bureau, multiplied by the total number of Residential Certificate of Occupancies (COs) and occupancy rate collected by each city.
A residential building attains a Certificate of Occupancy once the development has been inspected and cleared to live in. However, not every structure is considered one CO. Group Quarters, such as University residence halls, are considered multi-unit structures.
While campus population is not determined by College Station’s Planning and Development Office, they do receive the “average household size” – residence halls included – and can then determine
its population.
Therefore, on-campus residents are included into the total population count.
Hester said a contributing factor to the influx in population can be attributed to the construction in the Northgate area with a significant number of future COs emerging from the Rise at Northgate and The Stack, new apartment complexes
near Northgate.
“Northgate development is really popular right now,” Hester said. “There are also smaller developments going on. Everything adds a few numbers.”
Meredith Malnar, program coordinator for New Student Programs at A&M, estimated that A&M would gain 10,200 freshman and 2,000 transfer students with the Fall
2013 semester.
Hester said a larger population will bring “definite positives,” such as more part-time jobs for students and an overall
increased workforce.
“It’s attractive for businesses to [be] located here – knowing that [where] you have a concentration of people, you have a market and product base,” said Hester, mentioning that many franchise opportunities require a certain population base in order for them to be built in an area.
Evan Carlton, junior chemical engineering major, said he thinks an increase in population will help local business as well.
“I feel like the more students we have, the more businesses are going to thrive,” Carleton said. “It’s going to impact the community in a good way.”
However, with more people, transportation time has concerned some of the students of Texas A&M.
“It takes so long for someone to get home, whether you’re on a bus or in a car,” said Kimberly Hargrave, junior mathematics major. “If you want to go somewhere you’re out of luck.”
Hester said that with Bryan being considered a “twin city” to College Station, a population increase would also attract more tourists to areas like historic Downtown Bryan.
“If people are coming in town they have no idea what the city boundaries are,” Hester said. “What happens to one city is what happens to the other. When one is growing the other one is too.”