Housing plan to include thousands of new beds

The university hopes to add housing for as many as 5,000 undergraduates and 2,000 graduates by 2011 both on and off campus if all of the projects in the works now come together, said Doug Duncan, vice president for administrative affairs.

In the face of an unprecedented housing shortage, university President Dan Mote will present two new housing projects for approval from the Board of Regents' Finance Committee next week, which would add about 900 beds to the campus by 2009. The proposal comes as the university is looking into a slew of other off-campus housing projects that have yet to be finalized and represents a reversal of the administration's recent efforts to get public funding for new dorms.

There is no guarantee the housing proposals will be approved, said Vice President for Student Affairs Linda Clement, but administrators and some system officials alike are confident they will pass because of the negative attention the housing crisis has received. Regents expect to decide on the proposals by June 22, when they will approve the system's entire budget, said Finance Committee Chairman Robert Pevenstein.

"I would be very surprised if there was anything less than hardy support for new housing," said Mark Beck, director of capital planning for the system, "but we'll have to wait and see."

Under the university's new proposals, a new building in South Campus would house up to 400 students by fall 2009, Duncan said. A second building on North Campus would add as many as 500 new beds.

The rest of the 7,000 new beds expected would be made up by various projects, not all of which have been made public.

Both of the new housing projects would be built by private companies, Duncan said, a reversal for the administration, which applied last spring for loans from the regents to build new dorms on its own. Over the last year, the university has rejected three bids from developers offering the sort of public-private partnership it is now proposing.

Public-private partnerships, referred to as "indirect debt," in which a private company manages on-campus housing, have been used in the past to build projects like South Campus Commons. In such arrangements, the university gives the developer land the university already owns, and in exchange, the developer pays for construction and shoulders most of the financial risk.

Regents said they would only approve new construction projects that involve partnerships with private developers because the system is too strapped for cash to fund conventional dorms. "I think the philosophy of the regents has been and will continue to be to [use our money] sparingly," Beck said.

The Finance Committee first asked for housing reports from all of the 11 state universities at the last board meeting in April after this university cut more than 600 students from housing.

Vice Chancellor for Administration and Finance Joe Vivona said he expects the university to discuss "the broad outlines" of a housing solution at next week's meeting, and does not expect a detailed plan to emerge immediately. "We have time [to lay out the details]," said Vivona. "Any plan will take a long time to implement. To have a broad plan is sufficient enough, and then you chip away."

Though a solution to the housing crisis won't come soon enough to help rising seniors, student leaders expressed confidence in the administration's promise to build more housing in the future.