Building new dorms takes more than just construction crews and architects. It takes about five years for a new residence hall to go from an idea to an actual building, said Steve Waller, director of Residential Life. “First off, we have to follow laws in the state of Louisiana,” Waller said. “Louisiana mandates that you have to do a capital outlay process for state approval for anything over $500,000.” Before an LSU project goes through capital outlay, it goes before the Board of Regents and the Board of Supervisors. The capital outlay process, run by Louisiana’s Office of Facility Planning and Control, sorts every request into categories based on the type of project. After the projects are categorized, all available capital outlay funds are divided among the categories. Then, funding is recommended for projects based on the priority of the project and the budget given to its category. Once a project has been recommended for funding, it must be entered into the state architectural selection process, Waller said. The selection process is run by the state Office of Facility Planning and Control. A 12-member panel of architects in the state assigns architects to projects, Waller added. After a project has made it through the architectural selection process, it is assigned an architect and the real work may begin. As part of the design process, it takes about two years to design a project, and almost half of that time is for state reviews, Waller said. The next step is to meet with a bond attorney and get final approval from the State Bond Commission to sell the revenue bonds necessary to fund the project. This process takes four or five months, Waller said. “Revenue bonds are kind of like a house mortgage, except biannual house payments of about $1.2 million,” Waller said. Construction can finally begin after the bonds are sold. According to Waller, it takes 18 months to two years to finish constructing a new residence hall. “You can get it done quick if they work 12 hour days, but you’re going to pay for it,” said Waller. New construction costs $190 to $200 a square foot and residence halls can range anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 square feet, Waller said. It could potentially cost 20 percent more to finish construction at a quicker pace, Waller added. There are currently two new residence halls in the works at the University. The first will be located in the Hart Lot, near the Enchanted Forest, and the second is tentatively set to be built on the West side of campus. Waller attributes the new construction to the growing demand for on-campus housing. “Historically, we’ve housed about 60 percent of the freshman class,” Waller said. “We still have a couple more buildings to build … that will get us to the point where we can accommodate 85 percent.”