Kalmar nation doubles amount of apartments in city center

Tuesday, May 30th, Kalmar nation became the new owners of their neighboring house, Roseniusgården. The purchase means that the nation now has 22 new dorm rooms.

Kurator Johanna Schneider brings out a pitcher of lemonade to the garden of Kalmar nation’s main house, Kalmargården. Her colleague, Källarmästare Jonathan Broman, is seated at a picnic table in the shade of a big tree which he explains has been there as long as the nation house itself, since 1952. Yesterday the nation became the owners of the neighboring house, Roseniusgården, and the duo is clearly happy about the purchase. “I’m still kind of euphoric from yesterday, there’s a lot happening here but it’s very positive,” says Johanna Schneider and Jonathan Broman adds that “there are a lot of questions obviously. But I’m very excited.”

The idea to acquire an additional building has been going for a while and a year ago the nation approached the previous owners of Roseniusgården about buying the house. “We had a viewing of the property and then it of course took a while before things were settled and we had decided that they wanted to sell to us, and we wanted to buy it. So, it’s been a long process,” says Johanna Schneider.

Roseniusgården was already a student housing building with 22 dorm rooms so the building won’t require any bigger renovations in order to accommodate the needs of Kalmar nation. Currently most of the rooms are occupied but Johanna Schneider and Jonathan Broman make it clear that the current tenants won’t need to move out, even if they’re not members of Kalmar nation. “We are interested in offering affordable and good student accommodation, so we are interested in keeping the people who want to stay there. And then just over time making sure that it has a nice standard and that we can offer what we can offer here at Kalmargården and at Kalmar Västra at Roseniusgården as well,” Johanna Schneider states.

When rooms become available at Roseniusgården, they will be filled with Kalmar nation members. Other than that, the main changes they want to make is to eventually connect the gardens of the two houses if possible and to freshen up the spaces which need it. Johanna Schneider and Jonathan Broman are also convinced that the house being owned by a nation rather than a private company which wishes to make profit will be a perk for the current tenants. “Ultimately they will have more influence,” Johanna states.

Kalmar nation will now be able to offer housing to more members, but it does not mean that the nation aims to become much bigger than it is. “I don’t think that that works with our values because we are very community based and that is something that our members value a lot. We’ve noticed that a lot of members want to live here and we weren’t even able to offer as much as we wanted to so this is just a possibility to offer more to the members we already have,” says Johanna Schneider.

When asked about what the nation had to pay for the house and how the purchase was financed the duo state that it’s up to the house board if the numbers should be announced to the public or not. After the interview Lundagård receives an email stating that the nation wishes to keep the sum of the affair to themselves. However, both Johanna Schneider and Jonathan Broman make it clear that the nation’s economy won’t suffer from buying Roseniusgården and Jonathan Broman says that “we basically had no loans on our current buildings so we had leeway to loan more to buy the new one.”