The university started construction on two new residence hallson North Kenmore Avenue this Monday, closing off nearly a block ofthe street between Ignatius House and West Sheridan Road tovehicular and pedestrian traffic.
That part of Kenmore Avenue will remain fenced off for 18 monthsas the more than $100 million project is completed.
San Francisco Hall will be built south of BVM Hall, while DeNobili Hall will be constructed on the west side of Kenmore on whatis now the lot of Simpson Hall, and will extend into the lawn areain front of the Jesuit Residence.
San Francisco, set to house more than 400 first- and second-yearstudents, will be part of the Center for Sustainable Urban Living(CSUL,) a center that will focus on generating and maintaininggreen efforts on campus.
The hall will have a number of environmentally friendlyqualities, such as geothermal wells to heat and cool the buildingand the ability to monitor energy and water use by floor, saidAndrew Naylor, assistant director of Housing Operations. There willalso be floor-by-floor competitions focused on limiting energyusage among residents, Naylor added. San Francisco is slated to beLEED-certified at the gold level.
“So a lot of features like that are really going to make [SanFrancisco] a centerpiece for Loyola around [environmental]sustainability,” Naylor said.
There will also be a greenhouse built between BVM and SanFrancisco, where students will be able to grow vegetables thatcould be used in Loyola dining facilities, such as the café thatwill be built in San Francisco.
As part of the CSUL, the first three floors of BVM will beconverted into academic offices by fall of 2012. Also, the dininghall and chapel in BVM will be transformed into a clean energy lab.The other eight floors of BVM, Nash said, will become academicoffices in May, 2013, when BVM will no longer be needed as housingand the new dorms are finished.
“The offices that will be housed over there will be offices thatsupport sustainability on campus, to kind of create a true centerof experts,” Naylor said.
De Nobili, set to house roughly 200 freshmen, will offerstudents new dining options, according to Naylor.
“[De Nobili] will have a dining center at its base, likeSimpson, but a little better,” Naylor said. “Simpson is a greatplace, but a little crowded at times, so this will be able to takesome of that crowd away from Simpson. But it will hopefullyincorporate some new concepts so there’s variety between our diningcenters.”
The cost of San Francisco and De Nobili is $36,262,000 and$24,444,000 respectively, said Kana Wibbenmeyer, associate vicepresident for facilities. The $100 million project accounts for allof the construction on Kenmore, including the CSUL, according toNaylor.
The university has taken out loans and used the money availablein the Residence Life reserves to fund these construction projects,said Romando Nash, director of Residence Life. The room and boardrates that students pay to live in a particular dorm will then beused to pay the loans back over a course of 30 years, he added.
While the dorms are being built, students will have to findanother route to West Sheridan Road from the west side of campusinstead of through Kenmore Avenue, the site of five existingdorms.
“Because of how it’s placed near the street and both are beingbuilt fairly close to the street, there’s not a lot of space to putequipment to actually build the buildings, which is why they haveto close off the street,” Naylor said.
“All the residents that live in the residence halls alongKenmore will still be able to go out the front door of theirresidence halls and walk on the sidewalks going south to Rosemont,”Naylor added. “They can take Rosemont to either Sheridan orWinthrop to come back up north, but there’s not going to be adirect route over the next 18 months between the residence hallsand Mundelein.”
The construction and the sidewalk blocks frustrate sophomoreTracy Uchi, a nursing major.
“It usually takes me seven minutes to get to Mundelein, now whenits blocked, it takes from where I live 10 or 12,” said Uchi, 20,who lives on Kenmore. “It’s just inconvenient.”
“It’s either walk around or walk through a shady alley behindGeorgetown,” said 21-year-old senior Samantha Clark, a psychologymajor.
But before the construction on Kenmore’s two new dorms iscomplete, Loyola will open three other sophomore residence halls inthe fall of 2012 – Bellarmine Hall, Messina Hall and MarquetteSouth.
The revamping of Marquette South, located south of MarquetteHall at 6241 N. Kenmore, is expected to start in a couple weeks,Naylor said. The building’s rehab is estimated to cost between $2.5million and $3 million, Wibbenmeyer said.
Bellarmine, with a capacity of 304 residents, and Messina Hall,with a capacity of 120 residents, are being renovated from existingapartment buildings currently in Loyola’s possession. Constructionon Bellarmine, located on 6628 North Sheridan Road, just north ofChipotle, has already begun, Naylor said. The university plans toput roughly $12 million toward converting the apartment buildinginto an apartment-style student residence hall and Campus Safetyoffice.
The revamp of the Messina building, located at 6629 N. WinthropAve., will cost around $7 million.
“That building is a complete gut-rehab,” Naylor said. “I mean,when they finished demoing it, all that was left was the floorplates and the exterior walls. So everything in there, for the mostpart, will be completely new.”
Bellarmine is the first suite-style building designed withsophomores in mind since Regis, according to Naylor. Though Regiscurrently houses freshman, including those in honors, the hall willbe turned into a sophomore residence, as it was originally intendedin the fall of 2013.
The first-year honors students, as well as the honors offices,will then move to Campion Hall after the dorm’s revamp is completeand the Jesuits of St. Joseph’s Seminary move into the new seminarybuilding being built on Loyola Avenue.
“It will be the first building that is just dedicated to thehonors college,” Naylor said.
The university will tear down Rockhurst and Holy Cross halls inthe summer of 2012.
“The overall infrastructure of the buildings is such that wedidn’t want to continue putting in the investment, because it willbe actually be cheaper to build a new building than to raise themto a standard that our new buildings will be at,” Naylor said.
The land that Rockhurst and Holy Cross are on will probably beconverted into green space, Nash added.
With all the continuing construction and sidewalk blocks on theLake Shore Campus, Nash said he understands that current studentsare frustrated with the construction.
“I realize the people living on campus are impacted the most,but we ask [students] to keep in mind that the construction affectseverybody,” Naylor said. “We’re doing everything we can to ensurethey have safe routes to travel, even though they’ll be re-routing[their walks] around campus.”
© 2012 The Loyola Phoenix. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Economic Crisis, The Audit — February 9, 2012 11:55 PM Audit Notes: Energy Economy, Insider Trading, Mortgage Settlement
