| USF Housing accepting applications for new residence hall at Sarasota-Manatee campus |
| Student center and residence hall will open for fall 2024 semester |
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SARASOTA, Fla. (Oct. 25, 2023) – USF Housing is accepting applications from students who want to be among the first to ever live on campus in the new residence hall under construction at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee. As many as 200 students will reside in the building when it opens for the fall 2024 semester. The opening of the housing application process is the latest milestone for the $42 million, 100,000-square-foot project — the first major expansion of the campus since it opened in 2006 — that promises to remove USF Sarasota-Manatee’s moniker as a “commuter school” and reshape the look and feel of the campus, located along U.S. 41 between Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport and Sarasota Bay. USF Sarasota-Manatee Regional Chancellor Karen Holbrook said the progress in construction of the student center and residence hall has created an unprecedented buzz on campus, noting that dozens of faculty members and staff recently were able to tour part of the building site. The excitement, she said, will reach new levels closer to when students are able to move into their new on-campus homes. “The student center and residence hall are designed entirely to help our students create a new type of experience, a new type of community on the Sarasota-Manatee campus,” Holbrook said. “I am thrilled that we are now able to offer our students this wonderful opportunity.” Students will live in suite-style and apartment-style residences on the top four floors of the six-story building going up on the south side of the campus courtyard next to Selby Auditorium and the Crosley Campus Center. The first and second floors will be home to a new student center, making space for new and existing student services that have outgrown their quarters elsewhere on campus. Natalia Chersia De Leon, a sophomore psychology major from Miami, was thrilled to be one of the first students to apply for a spot in the new building, and not just because it will save her a 40-minute commute from her current home in Palmetto. “I really like the community here a lot. Everyone knows everyone,” said Chersia De Leon, who has applied to live in a two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment. “Being among the first to live on campus is super cool because you’re making history.” The new residences come in three configurations:
USF Housing officials will begin notifying students of their housing assignments in the spring. Also available are new and innovative dining options on the first floor of the new building that also will be available for the whole campus community and meal plans for residents. The dining hall will be much larger that the Café in the Crosley Campus Center, which will be renovated and continue to serve as a teaching lab for students in the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management. The 32,000-square-foot student center will be filled with amenities, some of which residents will share with non-resident students, that will make it feel like home. In addition to the dining hall, there will be laundry facilities, a mail center and a game room, as well as a ballroom, meeting rooms and study lounges, a campus bookstore and offices for student government and USF World. “I want to live on campus because it will allow me to have a lot bigger connection with people on campus,” said Isabelle Sorensen, a sophomore biomedical sciences major who plans to share a double suite with a friend. “I’m already here from 9 to 5 every single day, so it would be nice to be here all the time and start building more of a community.” ### |
