New University of Iowa dorm to be larger than first planned

IOWA CITY — Updated plans for a new University of Iowa residence hall have it housing 200 more students and standing two to five stories taller than originally proposed, which would make it the largest student housing facility on campus, according to newly released documents.

The Madison Street Residence Hall, as it's being called, is planned for the site of the old Iowa City Water Plant, west of the North Campus Parking Ramp and behind Burge Residence Hall on the east side of campus. It will rise 12 stories, have 1,023 beds, and cover 303,000 gross square feet, according to designs, which the university plans to present to the Board of Regents in March.

The hall, which will cost about $95 million, will provide kitchen and dining facilities to serve about 2,000 students, study rooms, a multipurpose room, recreation room, fitness center, and laundry facilities, according to UI officials. It also will provide lounges on every floor and 'pod-style' bathrooms — clustered private restrooms with a shower, sink, and toilet — like those in Daum, Stanley, and Slater residence halls.

When the Board of Regents gave the university permission to proceed with the project in September, the residence hall was proposed as a seven-to-10 story structure with 800 beds. The estimated cost was between $80 million and $90 million, although that excluded provisions for dining services, according to regent documents.

The Board of Regents in October approved demolition of the former water plant to make space for the new residence hall. That work — costing between $1 million and $1.5 million — is underway and expected to be complete by April.

A timeline for construction of the new residence hall will be presented to the Board of Regents next month, but the hope is to begin work in the spring and wrap up before the fall 2017 semester begins, according to Jeneane Beck, a UI spokeswoman.

The university awarded the work to Miron Construction Co. of Cedar Rapids in January. According to Miron's proposal, the new hall will include a three-story 'podium' that will house loading and building services, dining and residence life functions.

That base will be topped with three nine-story residential towers that will overlook the Iowa River. More than 90 percent of the rooms will be double occupancy, and the rest will be single rooms, with a few rooms for three or four students, according to Von Stange, assistant vice president for student life and senior director of University Housing and Dining.

The hall's lowest occupied level will sit above the 500-year flood level, with two feet to spare, at 658 feet elevation, according to Miron's plans.

Work on a new east side residence hall comes as crews near completion of the Mary Louise Peterson Residence Hall on the west side of campus — the university's first new residence hall since 1968. That $53 million dormitory is expected to house 501 students in the fall, although the demolition of nearby Quadrangle Hall means the university only will see a net increase of 143 beds until the Madison Street Residence Hall open.

University officials in recent months have discussed the possibility of a third new residence hall, although no official plans for such a project have been announced. All the construction aims to accommodate the university's growth plans of 500 new students a year for the next four years — a goal that, in part, comes in response to a regents proposal to change the way it funds Iowa's public universities by tying a majority of state dollars to resident enrollment.

The new funding model would pull millions from UI if its enrollment figures remain unchanged.

Because of those growth aspirations, the university is using an 'aggressive' design-build method for its Madison Street Residence Hall — the first time it has done so for a residence hall, according to Stange.

Design-build involves one entity and works under a single contract to provide both design and construction services, according to the Design-Build Institute of America. The method serves as an alternative to the traditional design-bid-build delivery, which splits the different aspects of a project between separate entities and contracts, according to the institute.

'This method will allow us to save time and cap costs, allowing the building to be constructed with a more aggressive timeline,' Stange said in an email to The Gazette. 'It is important to us for the building to be open in the fall of 2017.'