Monday, May 15, 2006

First look at new UND housing complex

The new $20 million dollar student housing complex that will soon be built on the UND campus looks to be a very impressive development. We've heard plenty about the development and the space has been cleared for construction, but we haven't seen any images of what the building will look like until now. So, without further ado...

The view from University Avenue.


A closer look at the structure.


A side view from the east.


An overhead view. Wow!


Some inside views...





I must say that somehow I wasn't expecting such a large or grand looking structure as what we see in those exterior views, but then again I guess $20 million buys more than you might think. I'm very glad to see that the building's exterior was designed to match fairly well with the historic buildings on campus. I once heard that the building would match the Aerospace buildings on the west side of campus, but I'm glad to see that the architect went with a more traditional appearence on the outside and a modern interior. As you're probably aware, this building will be constructed west of the Chester Fritz Auditorium. This should be a very impressive addition to University Avenue and I'm excited to see UND move student housing into the 21st century.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

A beautiful building in deed! Didn't I read in the past that this new student apartment complex was going to have like 360 rooms? I know that the school does have a housing problem, they deal with it every fall, my question is this........will this new complex alleviate the problem? If not, should they have maybe made it a little bigger? say five or six stories instead of four? Just asking.

Anonymous said...

I believe they are called "silos" at NDSU... UND needs more undergrad and traditional non-apartment housing badly. I hope that this is a biginnig to much new housing at UND. And the older halls, like Walsh, and the Wilkerson coplex need updating pretty badly as well. Hopefully the housing office keeps on rolling.

Anonymous said...

I can't believe UND can't fund it's building projects privately. $18 million for a parking ramp? Are you kidding me? Funded by the tax payers of North Dakota none the less. I can see residential halls and research buildings, but a damn parking ramp???

Anonymous said...

Ben, those "silos" are where we store our Research Dollars which we have so many of. You have to put the cash somewhere when your the top Research University in a 5 state area...

GrandForksGuy said...

Do you seriously think all building projects at NDSU are funded privately? Of course not! At an institution like UND, a parking garage is a necessity...not a luxury. Actually, of the many building projects currently underway at UND, the parking garage is by far the most necessary and worthy of funding no matter what the source.

Anonymous said...

GrandForksGuy,

A majority of the current building projects on the NDSU campus are indeed funded privately. But seriously, a parking ramp, with 750 spots, that costs $18 million dollars? Downtown Fargo just recently built a ramp for around $5 million dollars for 325 spots. Your telling me that double the spots costs more than 3 times the price? You guys are simply screwing over the North Dakota taxpayers. How about you build an enormous parking lot west of the campus and bus the students to the school. Have two circulators running every 5 minutes. Should cost more than $75,000/yearly to maintain (pay for drivers). I'm sorry but I find it funny that UND, which has NOWHERE near the traffic problems and parking problems that NDSU does, thinks they deserve an $18,000,000 parking ramp. What a joke.

Mike said...

You probably should give proper credit to the firms that made those images, visit www.jlgarchitects.com for updates.