Western Kentucky University will open the fall semester on Monday, Aug. 18, after scrambling over the summer to find housing for about 1,000 displaced students.
Campus housing is upended this academic year with three residence halls shuttered due to inferior construction.
The non-profit Student Life Foundation, which owns WKU residence halls, is leasing the former Hyatt Place Hotel, now serving as Center Hall, the university's newest dormitory.
One of the new residents of Center Hall is Sofia Witt, a sophomore from Illinois.
“It’s like we’re on vacation right now in a hotel, but we’ve tried our best to make it homey and added our perks, so it doesn’t feel just like you’re living in a hotel," Witt told WKU Public Radio.
WKU’s three newest residence halls are shuttered because of design and structural flaws. In May, the university announced plans to demolish Hilltopper Hall, which opened in 2018 at a cost of $40 million.
The Regents and Normal residence halls will be closed for at least this academic year to make those buildings more secure. They opened in 2021 at a cost of $48 million and made up what the school calls its First Year Village.
With three dorms offline, the Student Life Foundation, which builds and operates residence halls at WKU, signed a three-year, $5.4 million lease agreement with Hyatt Place Hotel at the top of the hill.
Catherine LaRoche, Director of Housing and Residence Life at WKU, took members of the media on a recent tour of Center Hall.
“This room here is a queen room. As you can see, it has a sofa area that’s pretty standard in all of our rooms," LaRoche explained.
The room with two queen beds and a sleeper sofa is noticeably more spacious than a typical dorm room.
Still on the walls are pictures hung by the hotel. It’s Bowling Green and WKU-centric artwork, which the students aren’t allowed to remove. That means they'll be no posters, LED lights, or the kind of artistic freedom students in traditional dorms are allowed.
WKU had to work through some challenges to accommodate the 200 students living at Center Hall.
“Things like having to add laundry for our students since they’re here all the time," said LaRoche. "We wanted to maximize occupancy here, so we switched out king beds for extra long twin beds so we could double the occupancy in that space, and then we had to add an extra wardrobe and dresser.”
Sophomore Sofia Witt says living in a former hotel has its benefits.
"We have our own bathroom with our own shower, so we don’t have to share with anyone else, and we have queen size beds this year," Witt said. "We have a pool we also have access to, which has been really nice.”
WKU President Timothy Caboni said the recent housing upheaval hasn’t deterred students from living on campus, as 96% of the housing stock is occupied.
“It’s a higher occupancy this year than in previous years, so we don’t think the residence hall issues that we’re navigating have had any effect on the incoming class," Caboni said.
Construction of Hilltopper, Regents, and Normal Halls was overseen by the Student Life Foundation, which owns campus dormitories. The same architecture firm designed all three of the now vacant housing options. The Student Life Foundation has declined to comment due to pending litigation. The non-profit has filed a civil lawsuit against Sewell & Sewell Architects, PLLC in Warren Circuit Court.
President Caboni says the Student Life Foundation 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 (request for proposal) process," Caboni said. "That can provide an advantage on one hand, but you’re seeing the outcomes of that on the other hand.”
Going forward, the university plans to take a more involved role in the construction of new dorms. Under a sweeping new housing plan, WKU will rely on a private partner to build and operate residence halls over the next decade.
“What we know is that the housing stock as it exists today is not competitive, so what we have to do is re-imagine the way in which our housing both operates and how it’s constructed," added Caboni.
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 an upper classman village.
The new housing model calls for WKU 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 national consulting firm to help develop the long-term housing plan.
Housing Director Catherine LaRoche expects improved living arrangements to have long-term benefits.
“As we update our housing facilities, our hope is that will help the university’s goals of increasing retention on campus and helping students persist to graduation, but then also helping with recruitment efforts, as well," said LaRoche.
WKU says it hopes to break ground on its ten-year housing plan next summer and have the first new dorms open by 2028.
