Cal Poly Project Hits the Brakes: San Luis Obispo Campus Delays $270 Million Dorm

The state's fiscal woes stall groundbreaking for a 2,700-bed facility. The project was set for occupancy in late 2006; now it won't start construction until 2008. Not all the news, however, is bad. Construction will proceed on schedule at many schools in the 23-campus California State University system.

By Thomas York

Though the 23-campus California State University system has a number of large student housing projects in the construction pipeline, the state's fiscal crisis has put one massive development on the back burner.

Cal Poly San Luis Obispo has delayed plans for a $270 million, 2,700-bed student housing development on the north side of the campus originally scheduled for occupancy in late 2006.

"That start date has now been pushed to 2008," said Larry Kelley, Cal Poly's vice president for administration and finance. He said the campus is being forced to reduce its enrollment by 600 students to accommodate spending cuts imposed on higher education by Sacramento.

If and when the new housing structure is completed, Cal Poly would have 6,280 beds for students-more than twice as many units than any other CSU campus. The 27-acre project was to have been co-developed with Capstone West, a private institutional housing developer.

Construction continues at San Jose State

The Campus Village student housing project at San Jose State University will add about 2,300 new beds, recreational and communal space and dining facilities. The project features three residential buildings. Photo by Thomas York.

Meanwhile, the $206 million Campus Village student housing project at San Jose State University is nearing a September completion deadline. The 1 million-sq.-ft. development, one of the largest single projects to be built on a CSU campus, is the first of several planned for the campus that will add 9,000 student-housing beds over the next decade. Atlanta-based Niles Bolton Associates is the architect and The Clark Construction Group of Bethesda, Md., is the general contractor.

Richard Macias, SJSU campus planner, said the project had been penciled in at $244 million based on the size and complexity of the structure. But bids came in $25 million lower, a savings Macias attributed to several pre-qualification meetings held with potential bidders. Macias said he wanted to solicit bids from only those contractors with experience in mat-slab foundations post-tension-concrete buildings, as well as experience in urban environments with tight site boundaries. "We did not want to have 30 to 35 unqualified bidders who would be unable to do the project," he added.

The completed Campus Village project will add about 2,300 new beds, plus recreational and communal space and dining facilities. The project features three residential buildings. One will house 600 first-year students to ease their transition to a college environment. The second will house 1,500 second-, third- and fourth-year students in apartment-style units now popular among college students.

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Macias conceded that the budget cutbacks could have a different impact once the project is completed. "One of the biggest challenges is whether we will be able to fill it or not" at a time of reduced enrollment because of the budget crisis, he said.

In Ventura County, California State University, Channel Islands, the newest school in the CSU system, broke ground last August on a $20 million student-housing complex. When completed in August, the complex will house 350 students. Newport Beach-based Corcoran & Corcoran is the architect, while Ambling West is the project developer. HMH Construction Co. Inc. of Camarillo serves as the general contractor.

The structure will be the first on-campus housing at Channel Islands, which opened a year and a half ago on the grounds of a former state hospital. Although the 1,000-sq.-ft. units will feature the latest amenities, the design will blend in with the existing 1930s Spanish revival architecture that characterizes the campus, said architects in the Los Angeles office of Leo A Daly, one of the school's architects.

Dave Mitani, managing principal of The Steinberg Group, says the style of living in college dormitories has changed. "It's moving away from dorm rooms with gang style bathrooms at the end of the corridor toward apartment suite living that offers greater privacy."

"The style of living [in college dormitories] has changed," said Dave Mitani, managing principal in the Los Angeles office of The Steinberg Group, an architecture firm based in San Jose that has recently designed a number of university-level projects in Southern California. "It's moving away from dorm rooms with gang style bathrooms at the end of the corridor toward apartment suite living that offers greater privacy."

One of Mitani's clients, The San Diego State University Foundation, is moving ahead with plans to consolidate nine off-campus sorority chapter houses into one 400-bed apartment type residential structure. The foundation's Sorority Row project required 25 public meetings with the sorority chapters, city and university officials as well as neighbors to create a consensus for proceeding with the $15 million project.

Mitani said the completed student housing project will feature a four-story apartment building with connecting units or "pods" serving as gathering places, as well as kitchen and dining areas for each sorority chapter.

"They are pioneers in this project," said Mitani, noting that Greek fraternities on the campus were the first to adopt the concept of combining chapters into a single living space. "We're bringing them together into a single community." He added that sorority members will benefit in that they will live in four-bed apartments rather than 10-bed rooms now found in some of the chapter houses. The participating sororities will sell their properties to the foundation, which will then build replacement buildings housing services geared toward SDSU students, Mitani said.

Construction is scheduled to begin this fall with completion set for fall 2005. Mitani said a builder for the project has not yet been selected.

Design-build gaining in popularity

Cal State Monterey Bay, a campus that occupies a large swatch of the old Fort Ord military base, is also moving ahead with construction of its $36 million North Quad Student Housing. The project features three, four-story wood-frame residential structures. San Mateo-based Webcor Builders is the general contractor with San Francisco-based Hornberger Worstell Architect and Planners as architect on the design-build contract.

Paul Cohen, project director for Webcor, said North Quad was one of the contractor's first design-build projects involving wood-frame structures. It is scheduled for completion in August. "Design-build is becoming common for student housing projects" among public universities, said Cohen. "In fact, it seems to be the delivery system they prefer," he added.

Cal Poly Pomona's Residential Suites will add 464 beds to the existing housing stock on campus. The $18 million project, which includes the construction of five separate buildings, is expected to be completed this summer. Photo courtesy of Cal Poly Pomona.

Meanwhile, Cal Poly Pomona is pushing forward with phase one of its $18 million Residential Suites project, which will add 464 beds to the existing housing stock on campus. The project features the construction of five separate buildings. RBB Architects is the designer, while Temecula-based ProWest PCM Inc, serves as both the construction manager and general contractor. Completion of the project is expected this summer.

Sylvia Botero, project manger for RBB, said the project was a challenge because they had to site the five three-story buildings within one square block of existing two-story housing buildings. "We had to blend in the new buildings with existing structures so that they did not stick out like sore thumbs," said Botero, who considered 14 separate siting options before choosing the one now in use. "It's a very different project than what we have done before."

And at Cal State University Stanislaus in Turlock, officials are proceeding with construction of the third phase of Residential Life Village, which will house 300 students. The project-features 75 four-bedroom units and will be completed in June. San Francisco-based RSK Associates is the executive architect for the $12.7 million design-build project, which includes Mauldin- Dorfmeier Construction as the general contractor and the Taylor Group as the architect. Both are based in Fresno. Occupancy of the new units will increase the ratio of student housing to students enrolled to under 10 percent, which represents the average ratio for the state university system.

Cal State Hayward is moving forward with its new $28.5 million Pioneer Heights project that will add 416 beds for students who want to live on campus. The Steinberg Group is the architect. No builder has been selected, but bids will be solicited this spring, said Bruce Bagnoli, campus planner. He said he expects the project to be completed in April 2005, though that timetable could be pushed out.

"We're in the planning stages right now," Bagnoli said, noting that the Hayward campus is one that still has space available for incoming students.

Even with that available space, the Hayward campus has more students wanting to live on campus than housing to accommodate them. The Pioneer Heights project will feature 75 apartment-style units occupied by four students each, which follows the ongoing trend in student housing to place students in apartment suites with kitchen facilities.

To help campuses reduce building costs and save time, The Steinberg Group's Mitani said his firm analyzes how to put "repetition" into the buildings.

At Cal State Fullerton, for instance, the firm designed a 110-unit, 440-bed student-housing complex that called for building prefabricated apartment wall units off site before moving them into place. The project consists of five, four-story wood-frame buildings, plus such amenities as a convenience store, study areas and weight room.

Mitani said the general contractor, Redwood Shores-based S.J. Amoroso Construction, dropped the prefabricated units in five different configurations to create variety in the floor plans. He added that the structures also feature "a lot of articulation" to avoid monotony and increase their visual appeal. The $23 million project was completed and occupied by students in the fall of 2002.