SANTA MARIA - Allan Hancock College could build its first dormitory by 2006, with the help of the development company that dropped out earlier this month from a large student housing project at Cal Poly.

The Santa Maria college's Board of Trustees will hear presentations Tuesday from Capstone Development Corp., which is serving as a consultant to the college, said Felix Hernandez, Hancock's executive director of Facilities and Operations.

Hernandez hopes to get the board's go-ahead to begin preliminary designs for a dorm.

A survey indicates support among students for up to 400 beds.

"The students are enthusiastic," Hernandez said.

The survey indicated that many students who live within 50 miles of the campus would like to live in a dorm, said Dave Humphreys, Hancock's dean for Academics.

Also pushing the college toward building student housing is a rental market that is tightening due to rising prices and landlords who require tenants to prove an income at least three times the rent, Humphreys said.

Eleven other California community colleges have student housing, Humphreys said.

Hernandez said the project could be built without state taxpayer money. He said the board could decide to authorize that tax-free revenue bonds be sold through a nonprofit organization to pay for the project, which does not yet have a price tag.

Officials at Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo talked about building a dorm in 2002, but it has become a lower priority, said President Marie Rosenwasser.

"We don't have the same level of funding and staffing we had two years ago," she said.

In addition, the rental market in San Luis Obispo is soft with more vacancies than have existed in several years.

Capstone dropped out of a deal with Cal Poly two weeks ago, after the CSU Chancellor's office requested that the university delay the 2,700-bed project by at least a year beyond the planned opening of 2006 and that they phase it in over three years.

CSU officials blamed the declining enrollment system wide caused by the state budget crisis. Since then, Cal Poly President Warren Baker said the first phase of the project is more likely to open in the fall of 2008.