Concordia hopes to build first new dorm in a half-century

Concordia University’s plans for its first new residence hall in nearly 50 years will be unveiled during a Development Review Board hearing set for 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 21 at River Forest Village Hall.

The DRB hearing will be the first in a series of sessions in which the five-story, 48,000-square-foot facility will be discussed and debated. 

As part of that process, the university will conduct a meeting at 7 p.m., on Wednesday Jan. 27, in the alumni room of the Koehneke Center to inform residents living in the vicinity of the university about the project.

Village trustees heard a presentation about the project at the Jan. 10 board meeting. The ultimate decision on whether the project is built will be in the hands of the trustees. 

Building the new residence hall, the first to be constructed on campus since 1969, is a necessary step to keep the campus competitive with Dominican (also in River Forest), Elmhurst College, North Central in Naperville and other colleges, university officials told the board of trustees.

The new residence hall will house 147 students in two- or five-bedroom suites; each suite will have two bathrooms and a common social area. The facility will be built between the parking garage and Gross Hall on the eastern edge of campus. 

Renovated exterior and interior social spaces at Mary-Martha Hall, a residence hall/office building, will link that building with the new dormitory, said Dennis Witte, the university’s vice president for administration. Total cost will be $16 million. 

The new building may be part of an overall campus master plan that could include other new residence halls as officials are weighing whether to tear down Gross Hall, which Witte called a maintenance nightmare. 

In addition to Gross and Mary-Martha, three other buildings have a residential component. David Jonathan and Kohn-Lindeman also are dedicated residence halls. Three-quarters of all the beds on campus are filled, said Witte, who also serves as the university’s chief information officer. 

But adding the new building is not about expanding capacity as much as it is about making facilities more attractive to prospective students. Suites would offer an alternative style of housing that isn’t like any of the existing dorms, some of which have been around since the campus opened in River Forest in 1913, said University President Daniel Gard. 

Renovations could be done to bring the existing facilities more up to date, but those can be more expensive than building a new dormitory and would not have the positive impact the university is looking for.

“Living accommodations are often considered when students are looking at a college We’re losing some prospective students because of the housing. … We have great programs but the dorms are outdated,” Gard said.  

Construction is expected to begin this summer and be completed by the summer of 2017. The first two floors will be occupied once they’re finished, while the other three floors will remain unoccupied while the university completes its fundraising, Witte said. 

A private condominium project on Bonnie Brae across the street from campus may also be under construction in the near future. The developer of that project is still working on the application, Village Administrator Eric Palm said. 

Village President Catherine Adduci called Concordia’s dorm proposal an exciting project. 

“I agree that there’s some need to update the residential halls. Dorms are changing,” she said.