Eastern Washington University's board of trustees has committed to financing about $25 million for a planned new residence hall on its Cheney campus, and a university committee has named ALSC Architects PS to oversee its design.

"It's the beginning of what we hope will be sort of a renaissance of student housing," says Stacey Morgan Foster, the university's vice president for student affairs.

That vision calls for replacing or substantially renovating all or most of the university's seven current residence halls in coming years, Morgan Foster says.

"We will probably decommission some of our existing housing inventory a little later. We have some buildings that are older and that have a lot of deferred maintenance and that are inefficient to renovate," she says, adding, "They are all in need of renovation."

At or near the top of that list, she says, are the two cylinder-shaped dorms, Dressler Hall and Pearce Hall, located just east across Washington Street from Roos Field. Both need major repairs that would take them out of service for a time, says K.C. Traver, the university's construction and planning services director.

The planned new residence hall would be the first the university has built on its campus in 40 years, although ConoverBond LLC, of Spokane, developed and owns one on the northeast edge of the campus that opened in 2002.

The new residence hall is expected to be about a 350-bed, 109,000-square-foot complex, with three or four stories, Traver says. It would be constructed on the north side of the campus, between Streeter Hall and the University Recreation Center, at the northwest corner of Cedar Street and Tenth Street, in an area that currently serves as a parking lot, he says.

The university hopes to complete design work this year and to seek construction bids early next year, he says, describing the project as being on "a pretty fast track." The intent would be to have it ready to occupy by the fall of 2013, he says.

The construction cost is expected to be about $18 million, but design fees, permits, equipment, furnishings, and other miscellaneous expenses are anticipated to push the total project cost up to about $25 million, Traver says.

The university plans to sell bonds to finance the project, with those bonds to be paid back through fees charged to those who live in the residence hall, so state funding isn't needed for the project to move ahead, he says.

Morgan Foster says the university's residence halls all are supported by the housing-dining fees residents pay and aren't eligible for state funding, so future residence hall projects would need to be funded internally or through other bond sales.

The seven residence halls have combined maximum occupancy of about 2,000 students, and last fall the university had certified occupancy of 1,726, so they're not operating at capacity, and Morgan Foster says the on-campus resident population has remained fairly stable.

"The primary purpose (of the new residence hall project) is to improve housing options for our students, not just to add beds," she says.