First Look at New Framingham State University Dorm September 24, 2014
"Framingham State University officials will be meeting today to discuss the next steps for the campus's new $44 million dorm, the first few renderings of which have been released by the school.
The 316-bed facility, which will be built in the Maynard Road parking lot, will be financed through the Massachusetts State College Building Authority, which pays for projects with fees collected from the students that use the constructed facilities. Dale Hamel, Framingham State's executive vice president of administration, finance and information technology, said the agency's board is expected to consider approval of the funding next month, and that the state's board of higher education should give its OK in November.
Hamel said he will ask the university board of trustees' finance committee at its meeting this morning to recommend to the full board that it OK that plan.
Construction of the new residence hall - the first to be built on campus since North Hall opened in the fall of 2011 - should get going next spring and finish in time for the fall semester in 2016. The schedule for the work largely depends on the completion of a new parking lot currently underway on the edge of Rte. 9, which will replace the spaces taken up by the dorm on Maynard Road.
The plan will also involve moving the university's facilities department out of a house slated to be demolished on Maynard Road and into a former manufacturing building the school recently bought on nearby Mayhew Street.
"There are a number of dominoes that have to fall for all these different projects," Hamel said.
The new dorm, for instance, is needed to replace several hundred beds that will soon be lost at the campus's O'Connor Hall, which is being converted to an academic building.
Renderings of the planned residence hall drawn up by Architectural Resources Cambridge show some of the dorm's possible features, including a study lounge area with a fireplace, a kitchen, and a game room."
