LARAMIE — The finishing touches are being put on the first of two new dormitories and an adjoining two-story dining hall as the University of Wyoming gets ready to welcome students for the fall semester.
Both the North Hall, which also houses the university’s new dining area, and the South Hall sit on the west side of North 15th Street in Laramie and are being built to look like the past — Gothic and collegiate with sandstone exteriors that fit with the older buildings on the storied campus.
Director of Capital Construction Jennifer Coast said the six-level north dormitory which features 410 beds is being readied to receive students next month. The five-story South Hall designed for 542 students will open for the winter semester.
“The advantage to the native stone is that we are building 100-year buildings here,” Coast said.
Stone for the two dorms came from Utah and J E Dunn Construction Superintendent Brenton Chinn said the stone was one of the first things on the supplies list when the project was approved. The dorms have been under construction since 2022.
“The stone was one of the big early hurdles. It had to be ordered about a year before the project started,” Chinn said. “And then just matching everything with everything else on campus.”
The gothic-inspired look goes back to the university’s beginning in 1886-1887 and contrast with the concrete high-rise dorms on the other side of 15th Street that were built in the 1960s.
“Many of the original campus buildings were built using sandstone from an old quarry north of Laramie,” said UW spokesman Chad Baldwin. That quarry no longer exists.
$289 Million Project
Coast said the $289.5 million halls and dining facility are designed to foster community and collaboration among students.
Entering the North Hall’s first floor from the southwest side main entrance, students will find themselves in a big space with a small kitchen area at the opposite end and a circular desk similar to a hotel lobby, allowing staff to monitor the secure entry and help answer questions or meet needs.
The huge entry room also includes small study rooms to one side that can be checked out by students for group study sessions or small-group meetings.
Housing floors boast an elevator lobby to create a sense of community that has a large screen for communication or entertainment.
Dorm pods have a variety of room choices from doubles, singles, semi-suites with a shared bath and semi-suites with a private bath.
“We find that most students will opt for the lowest cost option, but we also know it is important to have options,” Coast said.
Each dormitory pod also has single-use bathrooms, some equipped with showers, and not the more community bathrooms typical in the older dormitory towers. The separated bathrooms will also make it simpler if floors need to be renovated in the future, Coast said.
University of Wyoming’s brown and gold colors are used in different ways — sometimes with carpets or wall paint to reinforce the university setting.
The North Hall offers dorm residents and visitors to its dining area air conditioning from a cooling tower.
Coast said that the west campus energy plant fills the tower with chilled water at night and water pumps circulate the water to cool the interior by day.
None of the old dormitories have air conditioning in them, she said.
Window Saver
A green money-saving feature in the new dorms connects windows to the building’s HVAC system. If a resident opens a window in a dorm room, the heating or cooling in the room immediately shuts off.
“You can’t heat the outside,” Coast said.
The North Hall also has a laundry room for students on the first floor.
Various walls on common spaces inside the dormitories and in the new dining space are awaiting art installations. The art will feature Wyoming artists and their works as selected by the Wyoming Arts Council.
Baldwin said the university trustees set guidelines and the council acted within them to select the pieces.
“They bounced things back and forth and came up with something everyone could agree on,” he said.
In addition to the dorm space, the North Hall structure’s 182,226 square feet includes a two-story dining hall and cafe that will serve the entire university.
“It really has a resort feel the way it is set up,” Coast said.
Arched pillars and a great hall greet visitors walking into the dining hall entrance. The entry level has a cafe’ that will offer coffee and baked goods. It also houses a bakery that will supply other dining hall stations.
Food Prep
Associate Director for Dining Services Vaishali Chitnis said she and her staff are preparing for the arrival of freshman students for “Saddle Up” week orientation from Aug. 15-22. They are planning to serve 1,500 meals three times a day for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Once all the other students arrive on campus with varying meal plans, Chitnis said meal numbers will still stay in that range.
“Currently, our numbers are somewhere between 1,500 to 1,600,” she said. “This year we started an unlimited meal program. That means students can come in unlimited times and eat.”
Students, faculty, or the public without meal plans are still welcome to eat at the dining hall. For $12.99, visitors get access to its nine food stations. Among the stations are Americana, Italian, a chef-run charcuterie station, soup and salad station and a special station for those with food allergies.
Planning for all the various food needs has been ongoing for the past year, Chitnis said.
“We are going to run each station as its own restaurant,” she said.
Each station has its own freezer and hot cooking areas. The second floor of the dining hall includes a prep kitchen in the back and a row of freezers for food inventory and backup supplies.
Chinn said the freezers all have computerized monitoring so if one goes down, alarms will alert food services staff.
Putting the dorm and dining area into the same overall structure took some effort. Chinn the architects, alm2s from Fort Collins, provided a “well-designed” structure but having dorm floors over the dining hall meant challenges in construction related to fire codes and piecing them together.
“It’s almost like you are putting two buildings together,” he said. A 2-foot slab of concrete separates the dining hall’s second floor from the dorm floor above.
Outside, workers were focusing on landscaping. There are granite boulders and other rock , trees and sod, designed to blend in with the flow of the campus.
Capital Efforts
Coast said the South Hall, at 131,853 square feet, will house students who begin the year in two older dorm high rises and will move to the new structure for the winter semester.
During the Cowboy State Daily visit, the structure still had scaffolds on the outside and a lot of activity by a good portion of the 500 construction workers in yellow shirts and vests completing both dorms.
The dorm and dining hall project is just one of several capital projects undertaken recently by the university:
• The $86.85 million Engineering, Education and Research Building opened in March 2019.
• The $114 million Science Initiative Building opened in May 2022, with final construction completed in December 2024.
• The College of Law was renovated and expanded at a cost of $38.3 million, completed in August 2024.
“It tied the native stone in and has a beautiful celebration of Sen. Al Simpson’s life, and it really just looks like a professional law office,” Coast said. “We have a mock court that is every bit a courtroom that any our students will be in.”
At the Science Initiative Building, Facility Manager Bryce Dutcher said the focus is research and this summer fourth-floor labs have been installed for fall that will allow undergraduate students to be able to do their own research projects.
There also are various graduate labs, a community education wing, classrooms, and a section that contains electron microscopes and other advanced scientific instruments.
The building also boasts a greenhouse on the upper floor for plant research.
Coast said all the construction taking place over the past several years has focused on similar sandstone exteriors and that 100-year model with the thought of longevity but also future renovations that may be needed.
That means more steel and less sheer concrete walls such as those that exist in the “legacy” dorm halls.
“We are trying to create that sense of place to tie everything together and also be flexible,” she said.
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.