Lydia Mayer – Staff Writer
University of Wyoming’s 20-year construction plans include the building of a new residence hall and a parking garage.
With a four-year estimated timeline, the construction on the new residence hall is set to start in the spring of 2021. The residence hall will take the place of Wyoming Hall, which will be demolished starting after the current office residents move out in December. Those in Wyoming Hall will move to Hill Hall, an old residence hall that is being renovated to fit 200 offices.
The new residence hall’s budget is well above $10M, according to UW President Neil Theobald. This will be paid for using the amount of money usually put aside for renovations to current residence halls. As an explanation for not renovating current residence halls, Theobald said, “You don’t want to invest a lot of money in a really old building – buildings that won’t be here 40 years from now.”
The architecture of the new dorms is yet to be decided by the architect, Mackey Mitchell. The goal for the hall is to fit 600-800 beds.
With the residence hall construction comes fewer parking spaces, which spurred the need for more parking on campus. Planning has started immediately on a new multi-level parking garage that will replace the parking lot on Ivinson Street. After it is completed, there will be more or the same amount of parking available to University of Wyoming residents.
Parking has been a common complaint for students at the university. Nick Tucker, student at UW, said, “There’s no parking, you have to pay to be a quarter mile away from the Classroom Building, and if you try to park on city streets you’ll get a $50 parking ticket.”
Other plans to expand parking are also in the works. There is no timeline yet for the parking garage, though it is slated to be done before the new residence hall.
