The new $57 million residence hall under construction near campus will house 440 students starting in fall 2007. It will have suites with four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and living rooms. Some nearby residents have complained about construction noise, but others see it as a necessary short-term disruption for the long-term benefit of additional on-campus housing. The building will help satisfy student demand for university housing.

1. Daily Trojan
Aug. 31, 2006
Pg. 1
More USC housing underway
The new suites will have living rooms and house 440 students starting next fall.
By CHARLES ASHTON
Contributing Writer
A four-story, $57 million residence hall is under construction near the southwest
corner of campus and will soon give USC students a brand-new choice for on-
campus housing.
Expected to house 440 students, the building will be the seat of a new residential
college for students interested in arts and humanities.
“We’re excited about it,” said Jeff Urdahl, the director of TrojanHousing.
“We don’t have enough space for the people who would like to live in university
housing,” and the new building will help satisfy demand, he said.
Each unit in the new building will have four bedrooms sharing two bathrooms,
following the layout of similarly sized units in the Parkside Suites building.
Unlike those units, however, the new floor plans will incorporate living rooms.
“That’s a recommendation that came directly from students,” Urdahl said.
While small, the living rooms will offer “enough space to study outside of your
room,” he said.
The tenants will also enjoy air conditioning, cable TV and Internet hookups.
The building will have an “Italian Romanesque” exterior resembling that of the
Parkside Suites building, the most recent building to be completed on the Parkside
grounds.
A faculty master, w ho will live on site, will complement the arts-and-humanities
theme of the residential college.
The faculty master is a “senior faculty member acclaimed in their field,” Urdahl said,
and the new residential college will be following the lead of other residential
colleges by having a faculty master as a tenant.
The new low-rise, dubbed Parkside Phase II during its development, is taking shape
just feet from Parkside Apartments and Parkside Suites, near Exposition Boulevard
and Vermont Avenue.
Chattering jackhammers, buzzing drills and saws, clanging metal, grumbling engines
and growling motors signal that construction on the new residence hall is well
underway.

2. “If I look right down, I can see the construction zone,” said Xixi Hu, a freshman
majoring in chemical engineering, whose second-floor unit in the Parkside
Apartments building faces the concrete-and-steel hull of the future residence
building.
Hu moved into the Parkside Apartments this semester and said no one informed her
beforehand that con-
struction would be a continuing activity outside her window.
“We made a point of advising students there’s construction,” Urdahl said.
Hu said she often hears work begin on the new building at 6:30 a.m.
“The (residential advisers) told me if it starts earlier than 7 (a.m.) to talk to them.”
But she said the pre-7 a.m. noise has not prompted her to complain to a residential
adviser.
“It’s annoying in the mornings, but it helps us get up,” she said. “We just use it as our
alarm clock.”
Urdahl said construction on the new building follows a 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday
through Friday schedule, with work sometimes continuing on Saturdays.
The construction noise has not gotten the better of Cynthia Godfrey, either.
“It’s not that bad,” said Godfrey, a freshman biological sciences major who fives in a
Parkside Suites unit that faces the construction site.
“It’s something you can live with.”
But not everyone has had such ready tolerance for the noise.
Eduardo Meza’s office faces the construction site. He has been trying to adjust to the
noise since he moved into the office in May.
The business analyst, who works on the third floor of the Salvatori Computer
Science Center, said the noise was a nuisance in the beginning.
“When I first moved into this office, it did bother me, but I think I’ve just acclimated
to the noise,” he said. “Usually, I’ll just have some music on.”
Urdahl said the noise created by the construction project must be weighed against
the university’s need for more on-campus housing. The building process, he said,
poses a “short-term disruption” but promises a “long-term benefit.”
None of the tenants of the Parkside residence buildings has had to relocate to
accommodate the construction, Urdahl said.
Plans call for Parkside Phase II to be finished by June 2007, in time for fall-semester
occupancy. The building will receive a new, permanent name upon completion.