The University plan for residential housing will see the demolition of six halls in the next few years.
“Kirby Smith hall is scheduled for demolition in May 2020,” said Residential Life Director Steve Waller. “A lot of people are surprised that all these buildings are coming down,” Waller said, “But it’s been in our housing master plan that we initially published in 2001.”
Kirby Smith and Broussard Halls, on the northwest side of campus, and Miller, Herget, McVoy and Acadian Halls, on the southeast side of campus, are set to be demolished in the coming years. As incoming students’ expectations evolved in the past 50-60 years, changes to the current halls were necessary.
“For our older buildings, we look at what the building has [and] what it can maintain, but most of these are 1960, double-loaded corridors,” Waller said. “And in order to renovate them, we’d lose probably lose 25-30 percent of the beds to bring them up to the current standard of what a student is expecting in a resident hall. Losing that percent of beds makes it very difficult to fund a project over time.”
The new buildings replacing the demolished six will be completely new and have no relation to the previous halls, including brand new names. Adhering to the University’s campus naming rules.
Along with building residential halls, the University has been able to use land north of Kirby Smith Hall to build Cypress and Spruce Halls, with Cedar currently under construction. They have found other land to use on campus to build more housing.
“We are currently working on a program that will develop the campus greenhouse space, which has been part of our campus master plan to convert that to housing for 17 years,” Waller said. “We have the opportunity to do that as part of our public-private partnership, so we’re working on that program. The goal is to build for 1,750 new beds on that site. We haven’t formalized that program yet, we’re still looking at site construction and pricing costs to figure out what we can really do.”
While halls like Herget and Broussard are not considered worthy of preserving, there were extensive talks to decide whether a building can be renovated as opposed to being brought down. Waller said Residential Life goes through an extensive evaluation process to decide between demolition and renovation.
“We look at what the building has to play with, what it would cost to renovate it [and] what the revenue would be versus the cost of the construction. But most of these buildings are approaching [60] years,” Waller said. “They’re getting toward the end of their life.”
Not every building can be torn down. Every residential hall in both the Horseshoe and the Pentagon communities cannot be taken down due to their presence on the historical registry. The halls are considered historical landmarks which prevents these buildings from being destroyed.
The University has worked to ensure the Horseshoe community is on the same level of some of its newer buildings. Evangeline Hall is currently under construction and is scheduled for completion at the end of December.
“Our game plan is to move the science residential college out of Highland and Louise Garig and into Evangeline, and then in February of 2019 we will start the renovation of those two,” Waller said.
Highland and Louise Garig, both also located in the Horseshoe, will be renovated similarly to Annie Boyd, which was renovated in 2012.
Once the Horseshoe renovations are finished, all residential halls on campus will have been renovated, replaced or in the process of being replaced, with the exception of the Pentagon. Although the University has not done anything as of now, they do plan for some renovations in the future.
“We have some long-term plans and raised some significant investments in the
Pentagon, they’re historical buildings,” Waller said. “We’re looking at some things in the future on that, but that’ll be later down the road.”
