The Board of Trustees was recently approached with and accepted a ten-year housing plan that would feature extensive changes to the current campus housing that exists.
This plan is made with nine strategic goals, including creating more modern and diverse housing facilities that help recruit and retain students.
“This is about making sure that when any of our students come, A. they’d like to live on campus and B. that it’s a great experience for all of our students,” said President Laurie Nichols.
This plan would introduce five new residential buildings on campus and mainly take place on the site of the current Hill and Crane Apartments. There are two different approaches that the Board of Trustees will consider that’s closer to the construction of the buildings.
The first approach will place all five buildings on the Hill/Crane site and its adjacent parking lot and add a total of 588 beds on campus. While this approach would keep residential housing closer together, it would infringe on already limited parking.
“There is a lot of building and not a lot of space there,” Nichols said.
Approach two, will spread the new housing out more with three buildings being placed on the Hill/Crane site and two on the East Greek Mall green area. This area is currently the practice field for the UW Men’s and Women’s Rugby teams. This approach will add up to an additional 678 beds and will not affect parking spaces.
“The University should maintain the East Greek Mall green space as it is a historic and continued space for gatherings and is easily accessible for all on-campus living residents,” Cheri Bellamy, an APL in the Nursing program, said.
Carlos Gonzales, sociology major, said, “I think housing on campus definitely needs some improvements to fit the lifestyle of a modern student, but I think the numbers might not match what is needed. Everybody would love to live in a new dorm, but I’m not sure it’s necessary.”
This plan is still in its early stages and many of the final decisions have yet to be made.
“At the march board meeting there will now start to be real serious decisions to be made,” Nichols said. “They’ll start moving on phase one and they’ll say ‘Okay, we need to get an architect hired and get some plans made.’”
