Housing for Hundreds: MSU’s plans for new campus housing being set

It’s no new news. Missouri State University is considering plans for the development of a new dorm on its main campus at the corner of Holland Avenue and Madison Street. What is new is in the details.

“Our board of governors just gave us the go-ahead to go through design and development,” Matt Morris, vice president of administrative services at MSU, said last week.

Design and development, Morris said, is the process of determining the potential dorm’s size, layout and utilities. Meeting spaces and conference rooms also could go into the architecture of the building, said Dee Siscoe, MSU’s vice president of student affairs.

University officials have struggled with overcrowded dorms for some time, but it wasn’t until a Feb. 22 blog post by President Clif Smart that it was revealed MSU was up to something.

“Our current residence halls have reached their capacity,” Smart said in the post. “This new residence hall will allow Missouri State to continue to grow its incoming freshman classes for years to come.”

As the number of MSU first-year students grew to 3,194 in fall 2016, plans to expand campus housing is lagging behind developments at other schools. The count for first time, new-in-college students was 3,178 in 2015 and 2,801 in 2014. That means, in two years, first-year college student enrollment has spiked by almost 400 students. The MSU Board of Governors has compared the sizes and budgets of new housing projects of nine other colleges in nearby states.

Information shared at the board’s Feb. 3 meeting showed the University of Oklahoma will unveil a $92 million dorm this fall that will house 618 students. That was on the high end of dormitory development plans. On the low end was Southeast Missouri State University’s $25 million project that was completed in the fall of 2014 for 184 students.

MSU’s potential new dorm would be designed to hold 400 students in traditional-style housing, meaning two students to a room, with communal style bathrooms.

MSU’s most recent on-campus housing was the $8 million acquisition of privately-developed The Monroe, which brought capacity to 4,036.

Working partners
The estimated cost of the project also is yet to be calculated. However, Morris said, the university will ensure plans for the project would be financially feasible.

“We have to make sure the project has positive gains,” Morris said.

Bryan Magers of real estate development firm Bryan Properties was the sole respondent to the school’s request for information on construction of a new dorm. He is now working with MSU on the design and construction of the project and said a general contractor has yet to be determined.

“We hope to get some preliminary plans going at the end of next week from our primary architect Humphreys & Partners Architects of Dallas, Texas,” Magers said. “We will interview both Morelock-Ross and Killian Construction at that time.”

Bryan Properties already has completed other off-campus student housing developments around MSU, such as the $48 million Bear Village. First opened in 2012, the third and final phase is slated for completion mid-June.

Magers appointed two Bryan Properties employees, Brad Gebhard and John Schlichenmayer of Raleigh, North Carolina, to oversee the MSU project once it is finalized.

Additionally, the proposed project would be financed through a public-private partnership. Morris said students’ room and board costs in the new dorm would go toward paying Bryan Properties until the total cost of the project is reached. He said it’s similar to what would be a lease agreement between the company and the school.

In May, the university will present the plans conceived during the design and development process, though it may not be up for approval at that time, Morris said, noting the earliest anticipated completion is in 2019.

“We keep seeing our first-time classes increase. We need to make sure they have successful housing,” Morris said.

Siscoe said about 85 percent of first-year students typically live on campus. There are eight dorms on campus, as well as two apartments, Monroe Apartments and Sunvilla Tower, typically for sophomores and older.

Living on campus is a requirement for first-year students, but there are some exceptions.

Drawing crowds
MSU isn’t the only campus in the Springfield area that’s experienced overcrowding.

“There have been a couple of different times we’ve experienced overcrowding,” said Paul Logsdon, director of public relations and publications at Evangel University. “Most notably was in the late ’70s or early ’80s.”

And that’s because in 1977, Evangel added something new: a football program. Logsdon said this news brought in a lot of publicity for the school, and drew all sorts of attention. To top it off, the university hired a well-known former football player.

“Our first head coach was a professional player, Denny Duron,” Logsdon said.

The summer before, Logsdon said Duron spent time speaking at youth conventions, claiming Evangel would become the Assemblies of God version of Notre Dame. With that, the university recorded a 500-student spike in the early 1980s and deemed it time to expand the campus.

“We had the academics to back it up, but not the pretty campus we have now,” Logsdon said. “We were renting hotels up and down Glenstone.”

Logsdon said the school experienced another spike in the 2000s.

First-year students at Evangel, just like those at MSU, are required to live on campus. There are six residence halls on Evangel’s campus, as well as apartment-style housing for married students.


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