Where Students Live, Study and Unwind: Steve Reece, PE, on the Mixed-Use Student Housing Opportunity
Off-campus student housing packs more into a single building than its name suggests. Stack hundreds of furnished apartments above active retail, add structured parking and amenity programming that rivals a resort, and engineering coordination requirements multiply fast. For mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineers, success demands both technical depth and a collaborative instinct. Engineers need to work fluidly with architects from concept to construction documents without losing sight of the students who will live, study and unwind there.
KLH Engineers has spent years building expertise across off-campus student housing and mixed-use projects. Steve Reece, PE, commercial market practice leader and principal at KLH, has seen firsthand how these projects come together and what architects need from their engineering partners.
Engineered for Experience
Rambler Columbus illustrates what thoughtful engineering looks like across a complex program. The $138 million, seven-story development at 222 W. Lane Ave. delivers 889 beds across 379 luxury student apartments directly across from The Ohio State University — a market where off-campus housing demand has long outpaced supply. At 407,465 square feet, the building weaves together a ground-floor cafe and leasing office, second-floor study and conference spaces, a third-floor amenity deck with pool, spa, fitness center, pet spa, fire pits, Jumbotron and courtyard gathering areas, and a rooftop level featuring a sauna, yoga studio and sweeping views of the OSU campus. A 426-car garage completes the program.
For KLH, the challenge wasn’t just scale — it was diversity, with each floor presenting a distinct set of electrical demands.
“On a building like Rambler Columbus, nearly every floor has a different personality,” Reece said. “The cafe at grade behaves like a restaurant, the amenity deck behaves like a hotel, and the rooftop has to support a sauna seven stories up. We planned the power distribution so each of those spaces gets what it needs without oversizing the system for the entire building.”
Serving as Engineer of Record for electrical, KLH delivered lighting control design, base and common-area lighting, power distribution and branch circuiting, emergency and standby power systems, and an electrical fire pump — an infrastructure layer that supports the building’s ambitious program without becoming visible to the residents it serves.
Rambler Columbus | Photo by: Zach Miller
A Track Record Near Campus
Rambler Columbus is one of several off-campus student housing communities KLH has engineered near major universities. In Cincinnati, KLH provided electrical engineering for Hub Cincinnati and mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering for Yugo Cincinnati Deacon, both design-build developments serving University of Cincinnati students. Near Indiana University Bloomington, Clemson University and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, the firm delivered MEP and fire protection engineering for Hub Bloomington, Bixby on College and The Davy, respectively. KLH also carries lessons from one project into the next: its work on Hub Bloomington now informs a companion development, Hub Bloomington Lincoln.
“Every one of these communities is essentially several buildings in one,” Reece said. “Whether it’s a 14-story tower or a set of connected buildings, our job is to make the engineering feel seamless, so the systems serving the amenities don’t compromise the way students live.”
Rambler Columbus | Photo by: Chase Daniel
Working Alongside Architects & Trade Partners
For architects designing mixed-use projects, the engineering relationship matters as much as the engineering itself. These buildings demand early coordination — decisions made during schematic design about ceiling heights, core layouts and mechanical equipment locations have downstream consequences in construction costs, schedule and the quality of the finished space. On design-build projects where KLH’s scope is electrical, such as Rambler Columbus, the firm works alongside trade partners for mechanical, plumbing and fire protection, providing the detailed coordination that helps realize the architectural team’s vision.
KLH’s approach is to integrate early. When architects bring KLH in at the front end of a project, the firm can help evaluate options before they calcify into commitments — modeling how power distribution affects floor plate efficiency or how lighting strategies interact with the architectural intent for a lobby or amenity space. The goal is to be a technical resource, not just a drawing deliverable.
“The most expensive changes on a mixed-use project are the ones nobody saw coming,” Reece said. “When we’re at the table during schematic design, we can flag where an electrical room or riser needs to go before it’s competing with a leasing office or a unit layout.”
That collaborative posture is particularly valuable in mixed-use work, where the building’s mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems must serve radically different occupancies within a single structure. The coordination demands are high, and the tolerance for surprises in the field is low.
Rambler Columbus | Photo by: Chase Daniel
The Right Partner for Complex Programs
Across KLH’s nine market sectors — aviation, civic, education, healthcare, hospitality, industrial, lifestyle, retail and workplace — the firm has built a broad technical foundation across diverse building types. Mixed-use and multifamily work draws on most of it. Rambler Columbus reflects that range: a building that had to function simultaneously as a residence, workplace, fitness facility, hospitality destination and parking structure.
For architects building in that space, KLH brings the technical fluency and collaborative discipline to see it through, delivering buildings that work for the students who live in them and the teams who maintain them.
Rambler Columbus | Photo by: Chase Daniel