The Scripps College Board of Trustees has approved the schematic design of the college’s new residence hall, and planning of the building is now in the design development stage.
The building, which will cost $16.2 million, is planned to hold 82 beds. Two-thirds of the residence hall will be suites of three to seven single rooms, and the rest will be doubles.
Scripps’s Maintenance Office, located in the northeast area of campus, will be torn down to make room for the building.
Leah Hughes SC ’15, who is currently living in Smiley Hall at Pomona College because she was unable to get a single dorm at Scripps, said that the new residence hall might help with the housing shortage.
“It will definitely relieve some serious housing concerns for many at the end of the year,” Hughes said.
Joanne Coville, Vice President of Business Affairs and Treasurer of Scripps, also said she is hopeful that the new residence hall will improve Scripps.
“This is a wonderful opportunity to extend student housing along the whole northern end of the historic Scripps College campus and to beautify that section of the campus,” she wrote in an e-mail to TSL.
“The college has wanted to build another residence hall for at least the last three years,” Coville wrote. “There are many phases in the design of a building.”
The schematic design, which was approved by the board Oct. 6, is largely made up of the footprint of the building.
“That sets the mechanical and structural systems in place,” Coville wrote. “The amenities are decided at this stage, and while rooms sometimes get moved or reconfigured, such changes are usually minor.”
The design development stage involves planning in greater detail and building upon previous decisions, Coville wrote.
In an article for the Oct. 11 issue of The Scripps Voice, Sara Cores SC ’13, the Scripps Associated Students Sustainability Chair, wrote that the new building will probably not be LEED-certified.
However, according to Coville, the residence hall is designed to meet the LEED Silver standards, though it may not be officially certified.
“Scripps is evaluating the trade offs between the cost [and] time of obtaining certification to the value of stating that the building is certified,” she wrote. “We know that many students would prefer that we go for a higher LEED level and that we certify.”
Though it is still uncertain when construction will begin, Coville estimated that the building will take 12 to 14 months to construct.
The name of the new residence hall has not yet been decided. Buildings are generally named after the lead donor, who donates to the college a significant portion of the cost of the project, Coville wrote, and currently there is no lead donor.