In response to a surge in freshman enrollment, the university has repurposed the kitchen spaces in the Pentagon Community into dormitory rooms.

This adjustment, made over the summer, is part of the university’s broader strategy to ensure that all students, particularly the influx of new freshmen, have access to housing on LSU’s campus.

“We saw over the summer that there was a great demand to attend LSU and to live on campus from incoming first-year students and continuing students,” said Catherine David, LSU’s associate director of communications and development for the Department of Residential Life. “We looked at different spaces on campus that we could use as student rooms. We had to think outside the box.”

The kitchens, previously equipped with basic amenities such as a stove, sink and microwave, have been renovated to include beds, desks and storage units. The original kitchen shelves were left in the rooms for resident storage. 

Each new dorm room is designed to accommodate two students, doubling the capacity of the original space. 

Despite the transformation, students still have access to kitchen facilities. “Every building has five vertical stacks; one stack in each building has a kitchen, and the other four stacks are student rooms,” David explained.

This ensures that while some kitchens have been converted, each building still retains at least one communal kitchen space for residents to use.

“We want to make sure as many people can have the on-campus experience as possible while being safe and not compromising the quality,” David saved.

Ironically, the decision to repurpose these rooms isn’t entirely new. When the Pentagon Community was first constructed in 1923, these spaces were originally designed as dormitories. 

“The rooms were originally student rooms transformed into kitchens,” said David. Over time, the rooms were transformed into kitchens to serve the needs of students, only to be reverted to their original purpose almost a century later.