Family Housing units to be demolished for new residence hall

A 500-bed residence hall is set to take the place of five Family Housing units as part of a complete remodeling of the southwest corner of campus.

The new hall, which will go directly across from the one that opened to freshmen students this semester, will be twice the size of the most recent hall to begin operation. The demolition of the Family Housing units, two of which are not in use, will start in January, and construction on the residence hall will begin in April, according to the Director of Residential Living & Learning Dennis Koch.

"That became the next logical area for that to be," Koch said about the future location of the newest hall. "Since those buildings are in such poor repair, it was time for them to come down."

Koch said the decision to take down parts of Family Housing was not the easiest.

"It was extremely difficult," he said. "For us, it's even tougher, because we're not necessarily displacing classroom space or offices, but we're displacing places where people live."

The state of the units – Mitchell, Marshall, CV, Freeman and Workman Halls – was one of the main considerations for the decision to take them down.

"What we had to look at was the next logical place for it to go, and the fact that these buildings are getting to the point where they're just uninhabitable," Koch said. "We're having to close two down already, and the next three would probably fall within the next year anyway just because of the plumbing and some of the other characteristics of the internal structure of those 50-plus year old buildings."

The new hall will offer a more modern look to campus, but as it will serve freshmen or sophomore students, the facelift means there will be fewer opportunities for families to live on campus. Koch said that even if they used money to fix the Family Housing units, they would have to be completely rebuilt and still displace the occupants during construction.

"Obviously, with families it makes it even tougher because there is a limited amount of space for them to go anyway as far as on campus," he said. "It's getting to the point where you just feel guilty about putting people in buildings that are falling apart. It's a tough call, but it's just one that had to be made."

Koch said the classification of students occupying the newest residence hall will be determined at a later date and based on how the university's population grows.

"Right now, our freshman on-campus population is growing a little bit, but not a lot," he said. "Our sophomore retention rate is growing in the halls."

The new hall, which is expected to become operational in Fall 2013, will have two-bedroom suites similar to those in the recently built residence building. It is the first part of a residence hall building boom that will reshape that corner of the A&M-Commerce campus over the next few years. 

For more on this story, pick up a copy of the print edition of The East Texan that comes out on Sept. 29.