The University of Virginia is moving ahead with an initiative to house more students on Grounds, and one component has shifted slightly this month.
A subcommittee of the Board of Visitors is scheduled to hold a special meeting February 19 to approve the schematic design for a $160 million project to build hundreds of bedrooms at a residential complex at the intersection of Ivy and Copeley roads.
The meeting is being held this month so the project can go to construction on March 10.
In December, one of UVA’s top officials reminded the Buildings and Grounds Committee that providing more places to live is part of a long-term plan.
“This has its roots in the 2030 strategic plan,” said Colette Sheehy, the university’s senior vice president for operations and state government relations. “The idea being that we should try to house more of our own undergraduate students on Grounds, particularly second-year students.”
These plans would build on the recent construction of the Bond, Gaston, and Ramazani houses in the Brandon Avenue corridor. As with the Ivy Road corridor, the University of Virginia Foundation slowly purchased land over time to serve a greater purpose: expanding the university.
The committee last looked at the plans for the Ivy Road student housing in December, when it added the project to UVA’s Major Capital Plan, a comprehensive list of how investments are being made to construct new buildings and infrastructure. As of December, there is more than a billion dollars worth of construction.
Three buildings were proposed in December. Since then, the design firm Elkus Manfredi Architects has modified the plans to consolidate two of the buildings into a C-shaped structure that would be directly across Copeley Road from a private development at 2119 Ivy Rd. Two breezeways would allow for pedestrian access to the rest of UVA’s planned urban area.
Bethanie Glover, deputy spokeswoman for UVA, says the design has not changed all that much. “There will be three separate entries to the buildings, but since the north, west, and south wings of the westernmost building have connected circulation, it is considered one building.”
The smaller building would face the back of the $82 million Karsh Institute of Democracy and both would be immediately to the west of the new hotel and convention center that will be known as the Virginia Guesthouse. That project has a budget of $167.9 million.
The current plans for the Emmet-Ivy Corridor is for the L-shaped hotel to mirror the Center for the Arts, but construction of that project is not yet part of the Major Capital Plan. In December, some members of the Buildings and Grounds Committee asked for the center to be reduced in scope.
UVA also wants to build hundreds of residences at a site on Emmet Street where the University Gardens used to stand and where Afghan Kebab still operates. A design for that project has not yet been publicly revealed.
Ground was also broken in October for the first graduate student housing units at the Darden School of Business. UVA is hoping that both that project and the one at Ivy Road will be ready for residents to move in by fall of 2027.
