A Look at the New Residence Halls

With the housing lottery rapidly approaching, many students are curious as to the construction status of Campbell and Salice-Conley Halls. ResLife estimates that the majority of rising seniors will occupy these new buildings. As of March 8, when The Ram was given photographic access to the construction site, the building process was actively moving forward and people involved with construction were optimistic about the scheduled fall 2010 opening date.

"We should have students moving in here in August," Anthony Cella, project manager for Gotham Construction, the company building the news residence halls, said. According to Cella, Temporary Certificates of Occupancy (TCO's) would be obtained soon enough to leave sufficient time for the completion of the project.

"We're looking at a TCO for towers three and four [Salice-Conley Hall] in May and towers one and two [Campbell Hall] in June" he said. As for the overall completion date for the project, he said that the builders were planning to wrap up construction on Aug. 23. He added that although there will be some work being completed as students move in, such as planning trees and other finishing touches, construction will not inhibit or delay the move-in process.

As for shorter-term milestones, Cella said that the site will be completed and fences down "right around Commencement," indicating that a major portion of the work will be complete by mid to late May.

Having made assurances of the project's process, Cella and Joe Scaltro, Fordham's senior project manager, commenced the tour of the facilities, which Marc Valera, associate vice president of facilities management, called them "the nicest residences I've ever seen."

Confirming previous reports, Scaltro called the first floor "the most public part of the building," adding that it will contain the main entrance, laundry facilities and, in Campbell Hall, a new dining location and multipurpose room. Additionally, he said that there will be a single security guard for each building, located in the lobby area between the two towers.

Once construction is complete, Scaltro said that the road along the back of the new buildings is going to be reconstructed, completing a now disconnected route running behind Alumni Court South and Loschert Hall to East Fordham Road. As it runs between the new residence halls and the MetroNorth railroad tracks, this road will provide a place both for people trying to navigate the campus and/or assist with move-in and move-out in the new buildings in addition to its primary purpose as a method of getting delivery vehicles to and from loading docks in the buildings.

Additionally, a new pathway in front of Campbell and Salice-Conley Halls will connect to preexisting road and path systems near Martyrs' Court, Alumni House and Queen's Court.

This path will be part of what Scaltro describes as a "plaza" next to Martyrs' Lawn, reintroducing green space to the area that has been taken up by construction for the past few years.

As for the buildings' interiors, and more specifically student living space, the rooms will be similar, though by no means uniform, in their layouts and sizes. Showing The Ram several apartments in tower four, the most complete of the buildings, Cella and Scaltro noted minor differences in the apartment layouts, especially as regarded the exact placement of bathrooms and kitchens.

More or less identical will be the furnishings and appliances in each apartment. Kitchen cabinetry will be finished with a medium wood veneer and countertops will be modern in appearance and easy to clean. The bathrooms, which will be tiled, contain only a shower and a toilet. Two sinks will be located in each apartment outside of the bathroom, so as to allow simultaneous use of the facilities. Unlike sinks in other campus residences, those in the new buildings will feature countertops rather than unconnected pedestal sinks.

All four towers will have six residential floors. Towers one, two and three will have rooms on the second through seventh floors. Tower four, the only one with rooms on the first floor, will occupy the first through sixth floors. On the seventh floor, although there are large windows facing onto to buildings' roofs, the apartments on that level will not have access to the roof. The seventh floor will contain only two apartments, described by Cella as "penthouses," per tower.

Of all of the buildings' features, what Cella and Scaltro spent the most time discussing were state-of-the-art safety elements, including wide stairways for rapid egress, top-of-the-line smoke and CO detectors and alarms and double standpipes to make fire response quicker, safer and more efficient.

Regarding technology, Cella said that all rooms will have a "home run," or direct connection to the information technology facilities so as to facilitate IT functions and problem-fixing. This is in addition to cable television hookups in all rooms in the apartment, as opposed to the setup in Walsh Hall, where each apartment only has one connection in the main living room.