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• Campus & Community

The Wittenberg Board of Directors has approved construction of a new state-of-the-art residence hall to be built on Alumni Way and completed in time for the start of the 2006-07 school year.

Groundbreaking on the as-yet-unnamed residence hall, which will include 157 rooms with 195 total beds in 49,249 square feet of living space, is scheduled for April. Rick Moniger of the Pittsburgh-based firm MacLachlan, Cornelius & Filoni, which designed Hollenbeck Hall, served as the project’s lead designer, and Beasley Architecture and Design provided the drawings and specifications for the project.

The new residence hall will include three fitness rooms and three laundry rooms, one each on each of the floors, and 13 lounge areas, spread throughout the building with high-speed Internet connections and comfortable furnishings that will create unique spaces for students to conduct study sessions, group meetings or to congregate with friends. Each room will have high-speed Internet connections and cable hook-ups as well.

Built by Thomas & Marker Construction Co., the hall will be adjacent to the Benham-Pence Student Center at the corner of Alumni Way and Cassilly Street. It will be home to first-year students exclusively in an attempt to address some of the recommendations of a first-year experience committee that has been examining campus life and how students are adjusting to Wittenberg.

“The students in the focus groups stressed that they didn’t want a traditional residence hall with the long hallways and rooms on either side as far as the eye can see,” said Carolyn Perkins, associate vice president for student development and dean of students. “They wanted a sense of community, and they wanted both technology and comfort.”

Students also wanted more parking and more green space. As such, the structure will be surrounded by 114 parking spaces, and once the residence hall has been constructed, Hanley Hall, a residence hall located on the south end of campus facing Ward Street will be demolished and turned into green space.

Two houses were razed, and another was moved several blocks in 2003 to prepare the site for the residence hall. Also at that time, Woodlawn Avenue was blocked from the intersections of Cassilly Street to the north and Ward Street to the south in order to create Alumni Way, a brick path exclusively for pedestrian traffic.

The brick path currently stops just north of the Benham-Pence Student Center, but it will be completed in conjunction with the construction of the new residence hall.

“To continue to attract the best and brightest students and faculty to Wittenberg, we must renew our physical facilities,” said Darrell Kitchen, vice president for business and finance, “and this is another step in that process.”