This year, Stanford launched the construction of three new residence buildings, which will house a total of 341 undergraduate students in living environments that will encourage student interaction. Two of the dorms will be located in Lagunita Court while the other residence hall will be in Manzanita Park.

Construction for the Manzanita Park Residence Hall project took off earlier this spring and is expected to be completed by the fall of next year, while construction for the Lagunita Court dorms will commence this fall and is expected to open in 2016.

Residence facilities

The Manzanita Park Residence Hall will be located next to the Lantana and Castaño Halls and is expected to provide 125 new beds for upper class students in a three-story complex with both single and double rooms.

It will also include areas for study and presentations, computers and a lounge connected to the kitchenette. Along with designated spaces that the residents can use to support their needs, such as a music room, there will also be an apartment reserved for a visiting scholar.

The two new Mediterranean-style dorms located in Lagunita Court on Santa Teresa Street will be three stories tall and will be four-class dorms housing 108 students each.

Unlike previous dormitories, all three of these residences will also provide an apartment for a Resident Fellow.

Sapna Marfatia, architect in the University Architect/Campus Planning and Design office of Land, Buildings and Real Estate, spoke on behalf of the Manzanita Park Residence Hall project manager and also provided information regarding the Lagunita Court dorms.

“[The three] new dormitories will have social interaction spaces distributed throughout the floor at multiple location,” Marfatia said. “These programmatic additions were introduced to foster a sense of community and enhance residential education through collaboration.”

Project approval and costs

However, according to Peter Hoenig, chief financial officer of Residential & Dining Enterprises (RD&E), getting project plan approval for the Manzanita Park Residence Hall and the Lagunita Court dorms was not easy.

In what he calls an “extensive” approval process, the University must go through a series of approvals within Stanford and its Board of Trustees. Stakeholders, architects and project plan advisers discuss the residence hall blueprints, as well as the cost and funding that go into building the new residence halls.

According to the 2014-15 Stanford Budget Plan, the cost of construction for these residences is about $67 million.  Of the $67 million, $22.8 million was designated for the Manzanita Park Residence Hall and $42.8 million was designated for the Lagunita Court Dorms.

According to Rodger Whitney, executive director of R&DE Student Housing, pricing for the dorms in Manzanita Park and Lagunita Court will fall under the basic standard rates for undergraduate housing – the same as other campus dormitories.

He also explained that one of Stanford’s fundamental goals is to uphold Stanford as a residential university, as envisioned by its founders, Leland and Jane Stanford.

“As the undergraduate population has grown, R&DE has had to be creative to continue to meet the undergraduate housing four-year guarantee,” Whitney said. “The primary reason for building new housing is to assist us in meeting that promise to our students.”

“These new residences have been designed to encourage interaction, to provide stimulating, interactive living and learning environments and to support residential programming with residential education,” he added.

Contact Langa Tran at reachsplanga ‘at’ gmail.com.