Case Western Reserve University to build new dorms with 600 beds for second-year students

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Case Western Reserve University plans to build two new dormitories with a combined 600 beds on its south campus in Cleveland’s University Circle, with plans to open them by 2024.

The university plans to construct a five-story, 56,900-square-foot Murray Building on Murray Hill Road near Adelbert Road, and a six-story, 139,000-square-foot Hill Building directly to the southeast.

Most of construction will be on what is now a parking lot between the Fribley Commons dining hall and the area where the university’s fraternities and sororities have houses. A courtyard will be built in the middle, complete with what one slide in a presentation submitted to the city says will be a “reading and wellness garden.”

The dorms will be used for second-year students, who are currently divided among several locations, according to a March 10 letter the university sent to the city included with the presentation.

“The university desires to bring second-year students together to build a stronger connection and strengthen the sense of community,” the letter says.

University officials are expected to present their plans Thursday to the Cleveland Landmarks Commission, which must give its blessing to the plans before construction can proceed. The letter also said that the university is seeking a zoning change to accommodate the new dorms, and officials there hope they can get all the requisite approvals by summer.

The presentation said the university wants to start construction in August and finish by July 2024, in time for students to move in the following month.

A university spokesman said the construction of the new buildings is part of a plan to add more student housing while also phasing out some other dorms. The most recent dorm it built was the Stephanie Tubbs Jones Residence Hall on East 115th Street in 2015.

One of the slides in the presentation also includes a mention of potential future dorms with about 450 beds built on a parking lot across Adelbert Road. The spokesman said the university has not developed detailed plans for that site.

The letter says that the university has “ample parking available within proximity (of) existing lots” with more than 1,400 spaces, 363 of which are available. By contrast, 328 spaces are needed to accommodate those in the new dorms and the replacements of the spots lost with the new construction, it reads. In other words, it believes it can lose a parking lot and still have enough spaces.

The university said in a statement that the new dorms are designed in the mold of the newly renovated Fribley Commons.

“This project builds on that example by locating residence halls around a large grassy area surrounded by canopy and flowering trees and curved benches,” the statement said.