UND hopes to remodel campus dorms this summer
Apr. 13—More construction work will continue on the UND campus.
UND may be remodeling some of its residence halls this summer, if the project is approved this spring.
The university is hoping for a public-private partnership to do an extensive remodel of Brannon, Selke and Noren halls, while McVey and West will be demolished and new buildings will stand in their place, the university said in a UND Today blog post.
Mike Pieper, associate vice president for facilities at UND, said the project has been in discussions for more than a year. Pieper said students enjoy being able to go get food at Wilkerson Food Commons without walking outside in the winter, so a lot of the work will be centered on Wilkerson.
The university hopes to get approval for the project from the State Board of Higher Education this spring. Construction would take place in the summer, fall and winter if the project gets approved and would involve some shuffling of students.
"Housing is already kind of going to load the buildings based on what we would like to see from a construction phasing," Pieper said.
Pieper said Tuesday morning that total cost for the project is still being discussed. But university officials should have know the total in the next week.
Work also will continue around the new Memorial Union, which likely will open this summer or fall, and at the new Nistler College of Business & Public Administration, which is set to open the summer of 2022.
The university recently tore down Memorial Stadium. In its place, construction will begin on the Memorial Stadium Village, a public-private partnership that will feature athletics office space on the first floor and housing units on the upper floors. It is expected to open in summer 2022.
The university also is set to complete roof and window replacements for O'Kelly Hall, Ireland Hall, Gillette and, likely, the UND Armory. The second floor of O'Kelly Hall also will be renovated.
Skywalks will soon connect the Chester Fritz Library, Nistler College and Merrifield Hall, according to the UND Today blog post.
Work also will be done for new and existing parking lots on campus.
The city will be doing work on the Columbia Road overpass, which will result in closure of the University Avenue and Columbia Road intersection twice over the summer, for about three weeks each time. Traffic will be detoured, and Second Avenue North between Hyslop Sports Center and Swanson will be closed for the summer. Cornell Street and Campus Road will be closed most of the summer to allow the city to complete the reconstruction of Columbia Road.
UND President Andrew Armacost said the new construction will "help UND continue to thrive and grow as a campus and community."
"If we learned anything during the pandemic, it is the importance of that sense of togetherness," he said in the blog post. "There is no substitute for the sense of community that makes our campus special, and the physical parts of our campus make that magic happen. All this new construction is thanks to the generosity of our students, the state, public-private-partnerships, and the city of Grand Forks."
