CHAMPAIGN —The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has a design for its next residence hall.
The Taft and Van Doren residence halls on Fourth Street do not have air conditioning and are not wheelchair accessible, according to the university’s online housing search tool.
The U of I’s Board of Trustees will decide Thursday whether the campus can move forward with demolishing them after the spring semester ends. Demolition was predicted to cost $1.5 million at a presentation at a university senate committee meeting in 2025.
U of I has been planning to replace them with a new residence hall, which was expected to cost $181.5 million. The board will also decide Thursday whether to approve the design.
The new dorm will have a minimum of 600 beds. The existing residence halls accommodate about 400 students.
As enrollment has grown at U of I, the school has scrambled to find enough housing, converting shared spaces like study rooms into temporary dorm rooms.