11/03/2014
Lowell Sun
By Grant Welker
LOWELL -- Only a little more than a year old, UMass Lowell's Riverview Suites dorm building is already being expanded.
The $54 million building is receiving 300 additional beds to join the 510 that opened for the fall 2013 semester. The new wing, being built on what was a section of Marginal Street west of Glidden Street, is expected to open in time for the start of next school year.
UMass Lowell, and the number of students living on campus, has grown so fast that the university didn't see the need for the 300 additional beds during the planning process, said Larry Siegel, the school's associate vice chancellor for student affairs.
"We had no idea of the university's growth and the success the university was going to experience," Siegel said. "We fully expected to have enough housing. The school has just continued to grow in every way imaginable."
The 300 additional beds will be mostly double-occupancy, with some singles mixed in. All will be within suites of four to six students. The first phase of Riverview Suites is mostly six-student apartments, which, unlike suites, have a full kitchen with a stove, sink and dishwasher.
Among the wave of new construction on campus, Riverview Suites is the only one that UMass Lowell does not own but instead leases. The 20-year lease will also include the new phase, Siegel said.
Riverview Suites will be made up of mostly health-sciences students as part of an expanding program that houses students of the same major together.
The building already houses some health-science students, but the number will grow in successive years, Siegel said.
Riverview Suites, which already includes five classrooms, will also host a live-in faculty fellow, he said.
UMass Lowell has added or renovated so many dorm buildings since Chancellor Marty Meehan's tenure began in 2007 that the newest dorms at the time he began -- Donahue and Sheehy halls -- are now the oldest to not have been at least renovated, Siegel said.
The number of students living on campus has nearly doubled from 2,100 when Meehan's term began to 4,000 this school year.
Although Riverview Suites is the only new building that UMass Lowell leases, it does lease smaller existing properties to house students. Those properties include 17 units on Merrimack Street and 12 on Moody Street.