Construction begins on new dorm on University Place

Construction for the new dorm at University Place is underway and will be ready for students to… Construction for the new dorm at University Place is underway and will be ready for students to move into by the fall of 2013.

University spokesman John Fedele said the building will have 10 floors and house 556 students, with rooms consisting mostly of doubles and triples.

Fedele said the new dorm is part of the University’s plan to help alleviate the amount of freshmen living in overflow housing in various dorms’ lounges.

The University Center for Social and Urban Research, which was previously at 121 University Place, is relocating to a University-owned building at 3343 Forbes Ave.

The yet-to-be-named dorm will hold retail space on its first level. The Student Health Center, currently in the Medical Arts Building, and the University Counseling Center, currently in the William Pitt Union, might move to the new dorm’s second floor, said Eli Shorak, associate vice chancellor for business at Pitt, back in March.

Shorak also said previously that in the fall of 2012, there will be 7,400 beds on campus. That number represents about 44 percent of Pitt’s undergraduate, full-time student population. The numbers will continue to increase in the fall of 2013 with the opening of the new dorm. Forty-seven percent of full-time Pitt students will have access to on-campus housing.

Fedele said that the start date for construction is still uncertain, although the old building is already being demolished.

Corey Layman, a senior planner at Pittsburgh’s department of city planning, said that the cost of the project was initially $48 million and that the project will be completed by July 1, 2013.