Planning for new dorms announced

After meeting with community members and city officials over a span of eighteen months, Northeastern officials have developed plans to build two new high-rise residence halls, aimed at moving students out of leased off-campus apartments.

Both dorms will be twenty-two stories high. One is slated for an area known as Parcel 18 West, currently a parking lot at the corner of Tremont and Ruggles Streets. The other will be built on the current site of Cullinane Hall, a small administrative building that will be razed to make way for the dorm. The Parcel 18 site will house 1,200 students; the Cullinane site, 600.

Officials say the new dorms will replace 1,000 beds of existing housing and yield an additional 800 beds.

Building plans will be finalized after a community- and city-review process, which officials anticipate will be completed by next spring. If all goes smoothly, Northeastern hopes to start construction on the Parcel 18 site by spring 2007 and finish by fall 2009. Work on the Cullinane site would take place over the following two years.

City officials had pushed for the university to build new housing in the wake of instances of student misbehavior, most notably the postñSuper Bowl melee in the Fenway neighborhood in 2004, when a twenty-one-year-old died after being struck by an SUV. In July 2004, Northeastern and the city signed a memorandum of understanding, in which the university agreed to create a minimum of 1,250 new beds on campus.

University administrators worked with a community task force created by the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) to pinpoint future dorm locations. Initially, the university proposed new dorms on the North and Camden lots, now both parking areas. When community members objected to those sites as being too close to neighbors, Northeastern suggested the two locations in the current proposal.

This July, Northeastern filed with the BRA an amendment to the universityís master plan, which outlines the new construction.

The Parcel 18 proposal calls for an apartment-style dorm for freshman honors students. The building, which will include a dining hall, will consist of two twenty-two-story towers connected by a twelve-story section. A separate, adjacent building will house the administrative offices currently located in Cullinane Hall, as well as some ground-floor retail space.

As part of the BRA filing, Northeastern is also seeking approvals for nonresidential development opportunities, such as space for academic or administrative operations, on the North and Camden lots, and for a future mixed-use development at the Gainsborough Garage site.

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