News | 2/26/07

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Towson is about to break ground on the first phase of a massive new housing project.

The West Village housing complex, along Towsontown Boulevard and Osler Drive, will eventually house 3,000 students, according to the campus master plan. Phase one includes two residence halls with a total of 650 beds. They are expected to open in Fall 2008.

The two L-shaped halls will be placed between Millennium Hall and the Towson Run Apartments. But before construction can begin, the University's deal with Capstone Development Corp. must be approved. Vice president for administration and finance James Sheehan said the ground lease is scheduled to go before the state's Board of Public Works on March 21.

"The ground breaking will occur soon after that date," Sheehan said.

The construction will take away parking places around the buildings.

"In the middle of the Towson Run area, we're going to lose 200 to 250 parking spaces," director of parking and transportation services Pam Mooney said at a Council of Student Leaders meeting on Friday. "A big chunk of the parking is going away and we're going to slide the students down to the lower lot where there are empty spaces in Lot 22."

Mooney said parking changes may be put into place over Spring Break in three weeks.

Most of the Millennium spaces should stay intact, though prospective residents have been informed that parking availability is subject to change.

Jerry Dieringer, assistant vice president and director of housing and residence life, presented designs for the new residence halls at a Student Government Association meeting last Tuesday.

The SGA representatives were most impressed by the configuration of the rooms.

"These are double rooms with private baths," Dieringer said, inspiring an "oooh" from the audience.

"It's two people to a bathroom. You'll think you're at home," he said.

Instead of the Glen Tower's "suite" style, where two rooms share a bathroom, the new residence halls have a bathroom in each room. The sink is still located outside the bathroom, like in the Glen Complex.

The rooms "won't be as long as the Glen, but it's going to be a little wider, so it's going to be a nice functional space," Dieringer said.

Each residence hall will have two elevators and two stairwells. Each floor includes two Resident Assistant rooms, two "quiet lounges," and one "RA lounge." Each trash room will include recycling bins.

The new buildings will incorporate some of the preferred elements of existing residence halls. Rooms will face each other down two long corridors, like Prettyman and Scarborough Halls. Each floor will have a glass-enclosed lounge, like Millennium Hall. Each building will have a common room, like Richmond Hall.

Current students won't be able to live in new halls, though. They are designed for freshmen and sophomore students.

Phase two of the village includes another traditional residence hall and one apartment complex. The four buildings will form a central quad for the complex. If the village is completed as planned it will take at least eight years and will almost double the current number of on-campus residents (3,400).

About 800 mostly upper-division students already live in the Towson Run Apartments and the privately managed Millennium Hall. Phase one of the West Village will increase occupancy in the area to around 1,400 students.

The new residents will need a place to eat. Dieringer said the University plans to build a new dining facility between the two existing buildings. It is currently designed as a 100,000 square foot, five-floor "market" with a dining hall and common space.

Towson's original plan, from Spring 2006, had the dining hall opening in Fall 2009, but the timing may change. Until its completion, new residents will have to walk to Glen Marketplace or Newell Dining Hall.

To alleviate the parking pressures, a 1,600-space parking garage will also be built in two phases at the west end of the development, on top of what is now Lot 22. Because of the hilly terrain, part of the garage will have five levels and the other part will have seven levels.

According to last year's plans, the first phase of the garage will open in Fall 2009, though that is also subject to change.

The garage will eventually provide enough parking for roughly one out of every two students in the West Village. Many of the students will be freshmen, who won't be allowed to park on the core campus.

The West Village master plan, as presented last week, comprises six residence halls and four apartment buildings. All 10 buildings are aligned along a pedestrian thoroughfare through the middle of the complex.

Each residence hall, with two beds per room, will house somewhere between 280 and 330 students. They are each four to six floors high.

Each apartment building, styled on Towson Run, will house somewhere between 280 and 320 students. They are all five floors high.

The Enrollment Services Building will be razed to make way for three of the new buildings.

The SGA asked about the potential construction of a staircase up the hill to connect Towson Run or Millennium with the University Village. Dieringer said the University talked to the Village's owners about building one several years ago. The staircase would have been located on both properties, and the two sides couldn't reach an agreement on who would build and maintain it, he said.

The SGA also asked about the pedestrian crossing at Osler Drive, connecting the West Village and the rest of campus. Dieringer said a previously proposed tunnel under the road would cost $15 million. He said a bridge above the road also poses challenges.

"There's no solution yet," he said. "It would probably make sense to have a wide marked crosswalk with better lighting until there's a more permanent solution."

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