Agree to disagree. I also like the historic dorms in historic buildings but I am not a fan of just repurposing old neighborhood apartment buildings or facilities.
I preferred living in Shoreland to Blackstone because the former was a lot larger and more active than the Blackhole. Size matters.
There will always be hermits who enjoy living in a monastery. But why live in a city like Chicago if you want isolation?
I personally believe one of the main reasons UChicago now has a 99% freshmen retention rate--the highest in the country among research universities for more than a decade--is because of the decision to move the dorms closer to campus and make them a lot larger and more active.
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Originally Posted by Rally Monkey
I think we disagree on that. I prefer smaller residence halls that include just a few houses. The Chapin Hall building on Kenwood with its historic library and Gothic-modern design would be a wonderful architectural addition to the undergrad housing portfolio. And re-purposing the adjacent O-School buildings (or at least the historic church and seminary building) would help activate that corner of the campus. If they put a bookstore there, it might even be able to pull pedestrian traffic from the Obama Library just across the tracks.
I suppose mega-dorms may be easier to build when they're owned by a third-party developer. (The Woodlawn Commons model.) But I don't see much aesthetic upside to that. And warehousing kids in high rises doesn't exactly help create community or help fight isolation on campus.
If it is a mega-dorm, there're only really three places left to build it south of the Midway: Behind the Logan Center, behind the Law School, or just west of the steam plants by the train tracks. And if the College really wants to consolidate mega-dorms right next to each other, the Law School site is the only one that makes sense. There's also ZERO chance the Law School allows the College to construct a massive building in its back yard.
The next best solution for a mega-dorm would be south of the Logan Center between Drexel and Ingleside. Not exactly next door to the other Campus South dorms, but pretty close. As I've written below, there isn't a whole lot going on around there other than the grocery store on Cottage Grove. So it would probably feel like a bit of an outpost for the students. That said, mega-dorms are basically about housing and feeding students in the end, nothing more. If that's where the best land is for the site, then that's where it will go.
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