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	In this animation, students sit poolside at the recreation area of the proposed south campus housing complex. The Board of Regents approved preliminary materials for the complex, which offers premier housing for 864 students, including in-suite washers and dryers, a workout space and a swimming pool among other amenities.

In this animation, students sit poolside at the recreation area of the proposed south campus housing complex. The Board of Regents approved preliminary materials for the complex, which offers premier housing for 864 students, including in-suite washers and dryers, a workout space and a swimming pool among other amenities.

South campus student housing plan underway

New student housing is now a step closer to springing out of an empty lot on south campus.

The Board of Regents approved the preliminary materials for the south campus housing development at their Jan. 7 meeting, and the project is expected to break ground in the spring, said ASUNM senator David Conway.

“We went as quickly as possible, because we have so much of a demand for our dorms,” he said. “We are trying to expand the amount of dorms that we have as quickly as we can, but make sure we are doing it the right way as well.”

UNM contracted the American Campus Communities, a student housing development and managing business, to build and run the new dorms. The dorms would offer housing for 864 students complete with in-suite washers and dryers, a workout space and a
swimming pool.

The dorms will cost nearly $42 million to build. However, ACC is picking up the tab and plans to charge students around $580 a month through mandatory 12-month leases, said Kim Murphy, the UNM planning officer.

Conway said even though ACC hopes to make a profit from the dorms, their experience and efficiency should keep costs down for students.

“ACC is paying for it. We are not connected with buying these dorms,” he said. “It is a company that specifically builds and runs dorms. They are in it to make a profit, but they do it much better than UNM can. They know exactly what to do — they have it down to a science. I think that is why they are able to build a product much faster and they know exactly what goes into it so they can make it a lot cheaper.”

The 18.62 acre lot, located off Avenida de Cesar Chavez, will have beds arranged in four-bedroom units, with each student getting their own room, closet and bathroom and sharing a living space and kitchen with roommates, said Jamie Wilhelm, ACC’s executive vice president of public-private partnerships.

Wilhelm said ACC’s plans for the dorms are not purely for profit. Instead, they are trying to cultivate an academic environment for the University community.

“We will utilize our own financial resources to build the dorms,” he said. “It is not just a real estate transaction from the American Campus perspective. This is a community that needs to be in an academic environment or else we will not be satisfied with the outcome.”

Walt Miller, associate vice president for Student Life, said new dorms would help to alleviate dorm overcrowding.

“We have talked about the need of various housing on this campus to meet our student population needs,” he said. “This is step one of the project. What we are really trying to do is address the total student housing need on this campus, and we are really looking forward to this.”

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The creation of a student community is the main goal of the development and a major component of that is the community center, Wilhelm said.

“The community center is the heart and soul of the community — it’s where business functions occur; it’s where academic achievement occurs; it’s where socialization occurs,” he said. “It will have success center components to it with individual study rooms, computer labs and so forth.”

The effort to increase upperclassmen on-campus residence is directly tied to increasing student success, Conway said.

“The statistics are pretty staggering that students that live on campus succeed better,” he said. “They are retained better and they do better in school so having more students on campus will be beneficial.”

ASUNM President Monika Roberts said she’s researched similar ACC housing projects in Phoenix, Ariz. and other college campuses.

“I would like to show my support for the approval of the south campus housing for American Campus Communities,” she said. “I believe that this housing project is critical to the future of the university.”

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