The well-being of college students can be impacted by aspects of the physical environment, especially during key life transitions such as beginning college during a pandemic. This repeated cross-sectional study investigates the influence of a newly constructed living-learning neighborhood on first-year residents' mental well-being, specifically self-reported depression. The purpose of this study was to investigate (1) if residential first-year students' ratings of depression reflected differences between two built environments: old residential facilities and newer facilities that were part of a neighborhood, (2) if gender has an effect on these perceptions, and (3) if increased environmental satisfaction with different spaces in the new neighborhood drives lower depression scores. Students in two cohorts (n[subscript cohort 1] = 120; n[subscript cohort 2] = 112) were surveyed during the pandemic in the summers of 2020 and 2021. To improve the accuracy of predicting depression, participants' subjective satisfaction with their lives was controlled when investigating the influence of a change in the environment. First-year students who lived in the new neighborhood reported significantly lower depression scores than did their counterparts who lived in the old residential facilities. Results also reveal that this reduction in depression holds regardless of gender. Finally, as college residents' overall environmental satisfaction increases, their feelings of depression decrease, after controlling for their life satisfaction. Further, satisfaction within the personal residential (micro) environment has the strongest correlation with mental well-being. The findings from this study allude to the residential environment being the functional area that is most predictive of college residents' mental well-being. Implications for designers and administrators are discussed. [Discussion questions developed by Taylor Lawson and Eric Massey.]