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Rick Tollakson dodged a sprinkler system that was dousing fresh sod in the courtyard of an apartment complex that fit the Hubbell Realty Co. executive’s sense of design and function.

Different from other Hubbell projects, this was designed specifically for graduate and upper-class students at Drake University.

Tollakson walked through the complex recently as construction workers and landscapers were putting the finishing touches on Drake West Village, appropriately named in a student contest because it stands out as its own neighborhood at 31st Street and Carpenter Avenue.

The $37 million project resulted from the university’s desire to offer on-campus housing to graduate and upper-class students, who tend to live away from the university and become less involved in campus life as a result.

“The key to Drake West Village was that it gave us an opportunity to be on the leading edge of the trend for apartment style/suite living for our students, while at the same time allowing more students (upper class and graduate) the opportunity to live on campus,” Vicky Payseur, vice president of business and finance and treasurer, and the university’s point person on the project, said in an e-mail.

“Our students now progress through the on-campus living alternatives toward more amenities and more independence and privacy as they move through each year of their academic program,” she said.

Payseur said that prior to completion of Drake West Village, the university offered few housing options for graduate and upper-class students. Students in their freshman and sophomore years are required to live on campus.

Drake West Village also represented the last component in an overall plan to renovate dormitories.

The final stage of the renovation of the Quadrangle Complex of residence halls – which were originally designed by Eliel and Eero Saarinen, who also designed the Gateway Arch in St. Louis – was completed last week at a cost of $20 million.

In addition, Drake plans to transform 28th Street between University and Forest avenues into an eco-friendly pedestrian walkway and to regrade and repave Carpenter Avenue (also known as the Painted Street), said spokeswoman Lisa Lacher. Those projects should be complete in November.

The university has no current plans to construct additional dormitories, Payseur said.

At Drake West Village, Hubbell plans to lease more than 9,000 square feet of retail space, with businesses selected on the basis of preferences students identified in a survey the company requested.

Students said they wanted a coffeehouse, a restaurant, a tanning/hair salon and a copy center. A Hubbell spokesman said leases were pending with potential tenants, but none had been finalized by Aug. 21.

Drake law student Ndidi Amadi was one of the first to move into a building reserved for graduate students.

She noted that her room had its own refrigerator, oven, even satellite television. There are study rooms on each floor and laundry rooms in each building.

“They’re apartments; they’re not dorms,” she said. “Graduate students and upper-class students don’t want to live in dorms.”

Amadi is a graduate of Howard University in Washington, D.C. Howard also provided apartment-style living, but it “paled in comparison to this,” she said.

Construction of Drake West Village also followed a plan to keep neighbors informed of the construction schedule and included an offer for interested residents to buy houses scheduled for demolition at $1, providing they were relocated to available land in the area. In addition, Habitat for Humanity was able to remove material from houses.

Weitz Iowa was the contractor on the project and took a building approach that involved preserving as much material as possible.

For example, an estimated 80,000 board-feet of lumber were saved by prefabricating 7,000 wall panels and 7,362 trusses, said Weitz spokeswoman Kim Waltman.

That bit of conservation was needed. The project contained enough dimensional lumber to reach from Sioux City to Dubuque, with a few feet to spare, she said.

And by way of an education into the construction and completion of such a project, Waltman produced other figures that show that 3.7 acres of carpeting were used in addition to 6,333 square yards of hard-surface flooring.