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UW-Stout's Menomonie campus upgrades dorms

By Rebecca R. Konya

UW-Stout's new 296-bed residence hall features 75 suites with four single bedrooms, a kitchenette/living area and private bathroom facilities. The suite-style facility will be open to students in fall 2005.

Rendering courtesy of UW-Stout

When the University of Wisconsin-Stout's new residence hall opens next fall, students will be living the suite life.

The 296-bed residence hall on Stout's north campus will feature 75 suites, each with four single bedrooms, a kitchenette/living area and private bathroom facilities. Scott Griesbach, director of housing for the university, said the residence hall will offer amenities like laundry facilities, a recycling center and a full kitchen/lounge area on each of the building's five floors. The new dorm also will include common areas for recreation, meetings and other activities.

The contemporary student-housing design resulted from focus groups with students and a study of national student-housing trends.

"In the '60s and '70s, students grew up sharing a room with two or three brothers or sisters," said Griesbach. "Now students are used to having their own rooms."

The new residence hall will cater primarily to upperclassmen, added Griesbach, who said housing assignments are based on seniority and class credits.

C.D. Smith Construction Inc., Fond du Lac, broke ground on the $16.7 million project in March. Griesbach said the project is funded through student room fees rather than tax-payer dollars.

The new hall, being built on a former parking lot, didn't emerge from a lack of student housing so much as a need to overhaul the university's aging residence halls, many of which have deteriorating infrastructures and lack energy efficiency.

The new UW-Stout residence hall, which is being built on a former parking lot, is the university's first new student-housing project in more than 30 years.

Rendering courtesy of UW-Stout

"Some of our student housing was built back in the 1950s," said Griesbach. "One hall in particular is beyond its life."

The new residence hall will not add any additional beds to the existing campus housing.

"We're simply replacing beds," said Griesbach. "It's just a different style as opposed to the traditional two-to-a-room dorm."

The new, yet-to-be-named residence hall represents the first phase of Stout's master plan to upgrade campus facilities over the next 12 to 15 years. Although the new facility will eventually replace the Jeter-Tainter-Callahan complex, the second phase of the master plan calls for another residence hall to be torn down first to make way for a second new dormitory. Griesbach said the school's master plan is structured such that campus officials can continue to evaluate and update it as necessary.

The residence hall is the first new student housing to be built on campus in more than 30 years.