Eddie Hull, executive director of housing services and dean of residence life, laid out the University's plans and tentative schedule for the next decade of major residence hall renovations.
Duke’s dormitories will soon be getting a costly makeover.
At Thursday night’s Campus Council meeting Eddie Hull, executive director of housing services and dean of residence life, laid out the University’s plans and tentative schedule for the next decade of major residence hall renovations, which began with Kilgo Quadrangle during the summer of 2002.
As the residence halls on East and West Campuses begin to need general restorations and modernizations, Residence Life and Housing Services will “gut and rebuild” quads to ensure they remain livable and useful for the student body, Hull said. These major changes will be constructed in a form from which the quad model—a residential housing scheme that the administration has been struggling to define—can grow.
“We need to take care of facilities better than we have been,” Hull said. “The question is at what cost, how fast and who will be paying.”
The tentative cost of these housing improvements totals $164.1 million for West Campus and $45.8 million for East Campus, using the Kilgo construction as a model and adjusting for inflation. This large sum presents a major challenge to RLHS, which has been traditionally the sole funder of such projects. Hull noted that other already-planned RLHS projects, such as the re-roofing of the red-brick dormitories on East Campus, will not be affected by the new renovation plans.
Provided that “things stay the way they have been” all of the necessary funds will have to come from an increase in students’ annual housing fees, Hull said.
Many Campus Council members voiced concern about the funding of these changes, debating solutions other than absorbing the cost into student housing fees, such as establishing an endowment, reallocating tuition funds or soliciting donations.
“Eddie’s presentation made it painfully clear that we need to identify a funding source for [the renovations] beyond increasing rent rates,” said senior Anthony Vitarelli, president of Campus Council.
Bed space on West Campus, which has been limited for several years, will be further reduced by about 210 beds when all of the renovations are completed in 2014. Hull said he hopes this housing crunch will be alleviated by increased bed space from the construction of new student housing on Central Campus, which will probably be ready in August 2007, Hull said.
The anticipated dip in bed availability is a projected result of the quad model-oriented reconstruction that RLHS is planning. In order to shape the dorms to support the quad model, space must be allocated for faculty-in-residence apartments, more common student space and classrooms, said Joe Gonzalez, associate dean of residence life.
“We can have the quad model now, but these changes are going to help make that model much stronger,” Gonzalez said.
Hull echoed this sentiment: “We talk about residence halls versus dorms,” he said. “If we are talking about rebuilding residence halls, that implies building a whole milieu of things and losing bed space.”
The renovation of Kilgo quad, which cost $30 million and was completed this summer, was the first step RLHS’s decade-long plan and will be the model after which they reconstruct the other quads. All of the construction will be done during the summer, as to not disturb students, Hull said.
Crowell will be renovated next in 2006 and 2007; Craven renovations in 2008 and 2009 will follow, then Few in 2010 and 2011. Construction will move to East with Gilbert-Addoms Dormitory in 2012 and Southgate in 2013. Finally, the reconstructions will end with Edens in 2014, Hull said.
Edens’ position on the list also caused a stir among council members, with some members expressing their desire to increase its priority and others claiming that its relative newness did not require a major reconstruction.
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