The University of Michigan addresses a decades-long student housing shortage with a new housing-dining facility

The University of Michigan has faced a decades-long shortage of on-campus student housing. In a couple of years, the situation should significantly improve with the addition of a new residential community on Central Campus in Ann Arbor, Mich.

The University of Michigan has engaged American Campus Communities in a public-private partnership to lead the development of the environmentally sustainable living-learning student community. With RAMSA as design architect and architect of record and Elkus Manfredi Architects as interior architect, the project team will create a community comprising five residence halls with 2,300 student beds and a 900-seat dining facility.

The University of Michigan housing-dining project is “the largest third-party development project in the student housing industry to date,” James Wilhelm, executive vice president, P3 Partnership at American Campus Communities, said in a press statement.

The housing-dining project will help meet the demand among undergraduate students for affordable on-campus housing on Central Campus. The Central Campus residence halls will be the first built specifically for first-year students since 1963.

“This important new student residential community allows all first-year students who want to live on the University of Michigan Central Campus to do so,” Graham Wyatt, partner, RAMSA, said in the statement. “It will provide affordable and uniquely appropriate residential communities and amenities for the first- and second-year students who will live here.”

The development also will support the school’s carbon-neutrality goals. The housing and dining facilities will feature an innovative all-electric design, and the dining hall will use geothermal exchange systems for heating and cooling. Designed to earn LEED Platinum certification, the development will incorporate new energy-efficient heating and cooling systems, a high-performance building envelope, and rooftop solar panels.

To make way for the new Central Campus residential community, Elbel Field, the Michigan Marching Band’s outdoor practice facility, will be relocated, and a new teaching and practice facility for the band will be constructed a block away from its former site.

Completion of the $631 million project is slated for 2026.

On the Building Team:
Owner: University of Michigan
Developer: American Campus Communities
Design architect and architect of record: RAMSA
Interior architect: Elkus Manfredi Architects
MEP engineer: IDS
Structural engineer: SDI Structures
General contractor: The Christman Company