The Office of Residential Living will be offering different living options to students as they enter next year’s housing selection process as the university works to meet the requirements of the 2010 Campus Plan. These include the conversion of existing double-occupancy rooms into triples and the conversion of two floors of the Georgetown University Hotel and Conference Center in the Leavey Center into student dorms.
According to the 2010 Campus Plan, Georgetown must add 385 beds to on-campus housing by Fall 2015. Originally, the university planned to place 225 of these beds in the Northeast Triangle Residence Hall, 148 in the renovated former Jesuit Residence, and the remaining 12 from the conversion of other existing campus spaces. However, this plan was altered by the delay in the construction of the Northeast Triangle, which will not be opening until Fall 2016. As a result, alternate means of adding beds have been put into effect to satisfy the 225-bed vacancy.
Connor Maytnier (COL ’17), GUSA Secretary of Campus Planning and Residential Living, supported the hotel as a solution. “GUSA was able to successfully make the case for the hotel to meet as much of [the temporary need for beds] as possible, because I think we saw that as a living arrangement that students would be interested in, and that would be good for students,” Maytnier said.
In addition to the hotel, the university is also converting 45 double rooms into triples. According to Stephanie Lynch, assistant dean for Residential Living, most of these conversions will be in the Southwest Quad and LXR. Furthermore, these are temporary solutions that will only be in effect for one year. Once the Northeast Triangle is complete, the converted rooms will revert back to doubles.
Maytnier addressed concerns about the reduced space in these temporarily forced triples. “We don’t want to see units that are highly undesirable because we’re asking too much out of the limited square footage that we have,” he said.
Although this change is temporary, it is not the first time these rooms have switched occupancies. In fact, “Most of these spaces have been triples before [such as] when the Southwest Quad opened in 2003,” Lynch wrote in an email to the Voice.
This room optimization will affect students in their housing selection process as they consider how many people they want to live with and what price they are willing to pay for housing. “Currently, rates are determined by room type (i.e. singles cost more than doubles and doubles cost more than triples),” Lynch wrote. “This practice will continue and students will be aware of the occupancy of the space as they sign up for a room.”
Patrick Killilee, executive director of Residential Services, explained that the university is taking efforts to reduce the number of converted triples. “We tried to find as much space as we could elsewhere to not have as many triple rooms as we thought we might initially need,” Killilee said. “The least amount of impact on students is what we were trying to do.”
In order to achieve this, the remaining beds are being added in diverse locations. The RHO in Alumni Square has been converted into a student apartment. Additionally, a chaplain apartment in Village A will be occupied next year by students, and four townhouses on 37th Street will be newly available for students.
Furthermore, some study rooms in McCarthy and Reynolds are being converted into double rooms. Killilee explained that while some of these conversions are temporary, others will be permanent. “ [Because these are] somewhat smaller doubles, the ones that are permanent will end up being single rooms in the future,” he said.
In addition, renovations are scheduled for Village C East, with 10 beds to be added this summer. New rooms are being built on the fifth, sixth, and seventh floors, pulling from some of the existing lounge space. As a result, there will be structural reconfigurations to the lounges and aesthetic renovations including new carpet and paint on these floors.
“We don’t have final budget approval for this yet, … but we’re looking to at least replace the lounge furniture on those floors and maybe do new lounge furniture in all of Village C East,” Killilee said.
All of these changes rest in campus planning. Killilee stressed that this is not simply a matter of housing more students on campus. Instead, it is a “commitment by the university leadership as a whole to create a really strong residential undergraduate campus and experience for our undergraduate students,” he said. As the university proceeds in campus planning, it will focus on improving student life by expanding student life space, both in terms of housing and non-housing spaces.
What block of 37th st?