New facility to bring more housing options
A new facility to be built across the street from Romney Stadium will not only include a new housing complex, it will also have retail and restaurant space, and possibly other amenities like an exercise area, said Auxiliary Services associate Vice President Dwight Davis.
“The goal is to add value to the campus, overall, including the athletic venues being right across the street from the Stadium,” Davis said. “It will help alleviate some of the housing occupancy issues — certainly when additional housing goes in.”
Davis said there are various needs and services that some students and campus residents desire, which could be met by the installation of the new facility, Davis said. Typical universities have a “college town” feel, and this aspect might be fulfilled by a new commercial and housing complex, he added.
“Certainly, this will help to meet a (certain) market segment,” he said.
Brooks Butler, a freshman majoring in vocal performance, said he could have used the extra housing this semester, as he struggled to find a place to live.
“I did have housing lined up before I came out here but that fell through a few weeks before school,” he said. “At that point I was not in Utah, so I was looking for housing online and hadn’t been able to find anything until the first week of school.”
Butler said there was nothing available for a single male within a 20-mile radius, including on campus. When spots on campus did open up, he said he wasn’t willing to live there because of the high cost.
School started and Butler still had no solid living arrangements and was staying with his bishop. It wasn’t until Monday, Aug. 29, at the Imagine Dragons Concert, that Butler started talking with a member of a local fraternity, who asked Butler what his housing situation was, and told him about an opening in the Sigma Epsilon House, which Butler decided to take.
Director of Residence Life Whitney Milligan, who dissented the new plans, said additional housing is not a primary necessity.
“I do know that we are not currently in more need of housing, but I’m not aware of what the negotiations for housing being built in that location have entailed,” Milligan said.
Whether needed or not, the facility across from Romney Stadium will be built.
The land where the facility is to be built is owned by an alumni-owned company called La Veta Financial. Over the summer, negotiations between La Veta and USU — a parcel of adjacent property is deeded to the university — resulted in an agreement allowing La Veta to move forward with development.
La Veta’s plan is to utilize the space that it already owned and work together with USU to create a mixed-use housing development, Davis said.
“This private developer decided that he would like to build a really nice development on this property,” Davis said. “But he decided that by expanding it a little bit, he could add some really nice amenities that would add value to Utah State University.”
While nothing official has been decided yet, some of the prospects on the table include, Davis said, commercial/restaurant space and a gym facility.
“One of the things that I’m excited about is that there are not a lot of immediate commercial enterprises close to campus, and this will help add more of a college element to campus,” Davis said.
The cost and name of the housing have not yet been disclosed, though Davis said the facility is intended to be high-end and the price will reflect the quality.
Housing and Residence Life Executive Director Steve Johnson said renovations are also being made to many of the campus housing sites. Currently, housing capacity is close to 99 percent occupancy, he added, which means new facilities will be necessary in the near future, anyway.
“We’re trying to make some aggressive changes to improve the quality of life on campus,” Johnson said.
He said improvements include including new lounges and fireplaces in Rich and Davis Hall, relocating of the Student Living Center Housing Office, replacing the carpet and exterior stucco to Merrill Hall, adding new, energy-efficient lighting and new paint in the rooms of Mountain View and Valley View towers, and replacing much of the carpet in Aggie Village. Housing will also be putting insulation in the cinder block walls of Aggie Village to test whether insulation can reduce the cost of utilities.