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How important is it to upgrade housing discussion

C

carbonpoke

Well-known member
We are making headway and our trend is definitely skyrocketing, which is fantastic. I find myself, as a former student at Wyoming, wondering why we have not been more aggressive with our dormitory situation. To me it's absolutely at the top of the list, and honestly wish it was all ready in construction. I understand the expense, but when u look around the landscape, it is without a doubt the glaring negative to our school. I was at Fort Bragg, in some of the worst housing condtions know to mankind...Wyoming dorms are outdated...

We need new community floorplans with kitchenettes and more showers.

In my opinion, this needs to happen now or yesterday.

We're u sleep is a serious topic for students.
 
With a billion dollars of new facilities and a complete overhaul to the athletics complex, the dorms would definitely be the icing on the cake.

Here's the plan for the dorms. You can page through the entire plan at the bottom of the link and see some up close photos of what they might look like.

The plan looks impressive as hell, although it will be the most expensive facilities project in UW history.

http://www.wyofile.com/blog/trustees-consider-200m-rebuild-at-university-of-wyoming-dorms/
 
New Dorms are a key to the future of Wyoming, probably more than anything (at this point).

The upside, is that they generate revenue, very exact / precise revenue, that can be measured. It is NOT cheap to live in the dorms these days at UW (although compared to our peers, it certainly could be looked at that way). But as a revenue source, make them great, do it right, and they will easily pay for themselves in no time.
 
Just brainstorming here...
Nicer on-campus living options would drive down demand for off-campus housing, which would possibly drive down the cost to rent in Laramie. Great news for renters, not so good news for property owners/landlords. Does anybody know if Laramie property owners have been putting up a fight against on-campus housing expansion/renovation? Or has the slow progress/lack of discussion been because of other factors ($$$)?
 
cali2wyo said:
Just brainstorming here...
Nicer on-campus living options would drive down demand for off-campus housing, which would possibly drive down the cost to rent in Laramie. Great news for renters, not so good news for property owners/landlords. Does anybody know if Laramie property owners have been putting up a fight against on-campus housing expansion/renovation? Or has the slow progress/lack of discussion been because of other factors ($$$)?
Click to expand...

I don't think there is much of a dorm room count increase, with the complete renovation / reconstruction plan. So it will have little effect on the community and rentals, from what I understand. That, and some of those places in Laramie need to be mowed down and condemned...the slumlords have lived high on the hog for 30+ years in Laramie (way too long).
 
cali2wyo said:
Just brainstorming here...
Nicer on-campus living options would drive down demand for off-campus housing, which would possibly drive down the cost to rent in Laramie. Great news for renters, not so good news for property owners/landlords. Does anybody know if Laramie property owners have been putting up a fight against on-campus housing expansion/renovation? Or has the slow progress/lack of discussion been because of other factors ($$$)?
Click to expand...
Freshmen have to live in the dorms their first semester and then find off campus housing sophomore year and beyond, right? So, I'm not sure the rental market would be depressed like you're saying. It would be status quo as far as # of students living on campus and # of students living off campus. However, I do think having nicer dorms would in fact grow enrollment and therefore inflate the rental market.

Note: people are forced to spend a lot of time indoors in the winter in Wyoming. It would be in everyone's best interest to make that time spent indoors as nice as possible.
 
This should have been done in recent years when revenues were flying high IMO. Also, dorms generate revenue in another way...actually attracting out of state students! When I was in residence life at Colorado Mines, this was by far the number one concern of parents and students in deciding whether they would attend or not. It seemed very silly to me but that was always the major concern.
 
LanderPoke said:
cali2wyo said:
Just brainstorming here...
Nicer on-campus living options would drive down demand for off-campus housing, which would possibly drive down the cost to rent in Laramie. Great news for renters, not so good news for property owners/landlords. Does anybody know if Laramie property owners have been putting up a fight against on-campus housing expansion/renovation? Or has the slow progress/lack of discussion been because of other factors ($$$)?
Click to expand...
Freshmen have to live in the dorms their first semester and then find off campus housing sophomore year and beyond, right? So, I'm not sure the rental market would be depressed like you're saying. It would be status quo as far as # of students living on campus and # of students living off campus. However, I do think having nicer dorms would in fact grow enrollment and therefore inflate the rental market.
Click to expand...
It's extremely easy to get an exemption to live off-campus freshman year, I have no idea what % of freshmen live off-campus, however. There's also a 21+ dorm hall (or at least a few floors of one hall) if I remember correctly.

If anything, I guess my wish is the quality of on-campus living would increase enough to chase away the slumlords that have put UW students in a choke hold for way too long (as Peaches referenced).
 
Crane and Hill are scheduled to be torn down in the next 2-4 years. You'll more than likely see some sort of public private partnership build some new facilities on the site. There is about 0% chance the state gives UW money to build new dorms. It just isn't a high enough priority to the state legislature.
 
As I understand it, the dorm project is the top priority after the Engineering project is finished. I think it's going to require us to be in some money with state revenue again, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't happen if/when state revenue improves.
 
Cowboy Junky said:
As I understand it, the dorm project is the top priority after the Engineering project is finished. I think it's going to require us to be in some money with state revenue again, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't happen if/when state revenue improves.
Click to expand...

No, next is the Science Initiative Building. That's around a 100 million. Reslife is not directly part of the University, but an auxiliary enterprise. Funding sources are different than the other buildings on campus. In the case of the last round of upgrades that started about 15 years ago at the dorms, those were mostly paid for by bonding. All those new apartments next to the dirt parking lot were built by an outside source but will be owned by Reslife after a period of time.
 
agreed live in the dorms 88-91 and 92-93 and were in a sad state of affairs then UW needs new dorms in the near future, updating everything else why not those
 
elfletcho said:
Cowboy Junky said:
As I understand it, the dorm project is the top priority after the Engineering project is finished. I think it's going to require us to be in some money with state revenue again, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't happen if/when state revenue improves.
Click to expand...

No, next is the Science Initiative Building. That's around a 100 million. Reslife is not directly part of the University, but an auxiliary enterprise. Funding sources are different than the other buildings on campus. In the case of the last round of upgrades that started about 15 years ago at the dorms, those were mostly paid for by bonding. All those new apartments next to the dirt parking lot were built by an outside source but will be owned by Reslife after a period of time.
Click to expand...

I guess I didn't realize they we're building a seperate facility for the science initiative. I thought it was just a renovation of currently used lab space. Do you know of any links to that plan?
 
Wait, I found it. Here are a couple of links to the science initiative plan. Holy crap. We've gone science crazy. It is already funded though, so it's not like the dorms have to wait for other projects to get money before the dorms. Everything we're building now or soon, is already paid for. The dorms should still be first on the list of new academic facilities that need funding.

http://www.uwyo.edu/uw/news/2016/09/uw-trustees-give-high-priority-to-science-initiative-facility.html

http://www.uwyo.edu/science-initiative/overview.html
 
Cowboy Junky said:
Wait, I found it. Here are a couple of links to the science initiative plan. Holy crap. We've gone science crazy. It is already funded though, so it's not like the dorms have to wait for other projects to get money before the dorms. Everything we're building now or soon, is already paid for. The dorms should still be first on the list of new academic facilities that need funding.

http://www.uwyo.edu/uw/news/2016/09/uw-trustees-give-high-priority-to-science-initiative-facility.html

http://www.uwyo.edu/science-initiative/overview.html
Click to expand...

Main building isn't funded yet. They have only done level 1 and 2 design on this. Level 3 is when you actually build it. Yeah it is another building we don't need, but new is always better!
 
I think investment in science and lab space is money well spent. If they're smart and strategic about the lab space they build, they have an opportunity to really increase the research money our school receives and that has a huge impact on the ranking of your institution.
 
On my phone so not going to link up any pics, but you all should just google search our conference schools dorms, ie... I searched Hawaii dorms (google images). I think Hawaii has the nicest. Sjsu dorms are on level with Wyoming, if that tells u anything. Air force academy seems very contemporary. I hate to say it, Boise has pretty sweet living conditions.

If we did it right and kept it with a Wyoming feel, like river rock meets log resort... We could create something very unique. Rustic, maybe log bed frames. Sweet community areas. Whatever we go with just needs to talked about. It's time.
 
McPeachy said:
New Dorms are a key to the future of Wyoming, probably more than anything (at this point).

The upside, is that they generate revenue, very exact / precise revenue, that can be measured. It is NOT cheap to live in the dorms these days at UW (although compared to our peers, it certainly could be looked at that way). But as a revenue source, make them great, do it right, and they will easily pay for themselves in no time.
Click to expand...

And when your building them, realize they will probably need remodeled every 20-30 years. If the building is built to last, at least put some planning into making it easy to upgrade and modernize them.
 
elfletcho said:
Crane and Hill are scheduled to be torn down in the next 2-4 years. You'll more than likely see some sort of public private partnership build some new facilities on the site. There is about 0% chance the state gives UW money to build new dorms. It just isn't a high enough priority to the state legislature.
Click to expand...

Ugh - I hope not. Businesses are great - but they only have one thing on their mind - making money. That will just increase the costs of getting an education at UW.
 
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