With around 1,000 students displaced and its three newest dorms slated for either demolition or repairs, Western Kentucky University is taking a more active role in future dorm construction.
Due to design and construction flaws, the school will demolish Hilltopper Hall, which opened in 2018 at a cost of $40 million. Regents and Normal residence Halls, which opened in 2021 at $48 million, will close for the next year to make those buildings more structurally sound.
Construction of those three dorms was overseen by the Student Life Foundation, which owns campus residence halls. President Timothy Caboni says the non-profit doesn’t follow the same process as the university in constructing other buildings on campus.
“One of the innovations the Student Life Foundation created for the university was the ability to operate outside of the state’s normal operating procedures and RFP process," explained Caboni. "That can provide an advantage on one hand, but you’re seeing the outcomes of that on the other hand.”
Caboni says the university follows the state procurement process that includes third-party,
objective oversight of every construction project on campus, and the Student Life Foundation not
having the same standards, may have created gaps in the quality of new dorm construction.
The same architecture and engineering firms designed all three of the new dorms. The Student Life Foundation has declined to comment further due to “legal circumstances," according to a statement from SLF attorney Tad Pardue.
Meanwhile, WKU has signed a lease agreement with Hyatt Place Hotel adjacent to campus to help house about 1,000 displaced students. The hotel will become known as Center Hall.
WKU has announced plans to transform university housing over the next decade by finding a private partner to build and operate residence halls.
"A large challenge requires an even larger solution," said Caboni. "What we know is that the housing stock, as it exists today, is not competitive, and so what we have to do is re-imagine how our housing operates and how it's constructed."
The first phase of the housing plan includes demolishing Hilltopper Hall and repairing Normal and Regents Halls.
Phase two will involve replacing the aging Douglas Keen and Hugh Poland Halls to complete the First-Year Village.
In the third phase, Gilbert, McCormack, and Rodes Harlin Halls will be demolished and replaced by new dorms in the upper class village.
The new housing model calls for WKU residence halls to move away from community-style living toward more modern arrangements like pod or suite-style living.
The university and Student Life Foundation have hired a Washington, D.C. consulting firm, Brailsford and Dunlavey to help develop the long-term housing plan.
