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A new residence hall for Honors College freshmen and sophomores is in the works.
Plans are moving forward to demolish the four remaining Towers residence halls, replacing the 1960s-era high-rise buildings on Blossom Street with an honors residence hall to open by fall 2009.

For several months, University Housing administrators have met with architects at Scott Garvin and Associates of Columbia and Sasaki Associates in Boston to program the layout and design of the new residence hall.

“This will be a 600- to 700-bed residence hall, incorporating a lot of input we’ve received from student focus groups,” said Gene Luna, director of University Housing. “We’re aiming for Gold LEED certification (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) and a highly developed landscape plan that will speak well of the University at this very visible location.”

The residence hall will house first- and second-year Honors College students; any remaining rooms could be filled by students now living in learning communities for music, engineering, premedicine, or other disciplines. Once construction of the new residence hall is complete, Maxcy College, the current freshman honors dorm, will house freshmen and sophomores from the general student population, along with Columbia Hall and Capstone.

“The primary reason behind the new residence is that the freshman class can no longer be housed in a single residence, and we have had to have two freshmen honors residences, Maxcy and Capstone—sometimes unflatteringly called ‘Maxcy overflow,’” said Davis Baird, dean of the Honors College. “The new residence will house all freshmen and some sophomores too, and it allows for some growth as well.”

Honors student Kenneth Bryan, who lived in Capstone his freshman year and Maxcy his sophomore year, concurs. “The new honors residence is needed … to have a unified Honors College,” he said. “Right now one-third of the incoming honors students do not live in the main honors dorm. This gives the two groups a completely different experience.”

The honors dorm’s exterior design includes three wings perpendicular to Blossom Street and a main wing parallel to Blossom Street and facing the rear of the Graduate Science Research Center. The basic floor plan calls for “pods” that would include a common living area for 12 students who would live in either single- or double-occupancy rooms. Bathrooms shared by two to four students would be incorporated into each pod. A learning center will be incorporated into
the main building and situated to allow convenient access for those who don’t live in the residence hall.

With the Towers coming down, USC has 900 fewer residence hall beds. The new honors residence hall will not completely replace that number. Future plans also call for demolishing the McBryde Quadrangle, making room for a new student health center.

“We had a very aggressive goal of housing 50 percent of our undergraduate students on campus, and we met that goal,” said Tim Coley, director of Residence Life. “Since that goal was set, though, a number of privately developed student apartment complexes have opened near campus. Also, in the past few years we have opened several new residence halls, including East Quad, West Quad, and the Greek Village.

“So students have a lot of good options now that didn’t exist several years ago.
Therefore, while eliminating some of our obsolete residence halls like the Towers
might lower the percentage of students in USC-owned residence halls, our students
will have more student housing opportunities than ever before.”

As for the students of the Honors College, the new residence is bound to enrich their experience. Bryan sums it up: “With a new honors residence hall large enough to accommodate more than all of the freshmen, a stronger honors community should emerge.”

New Honors Housing Floor Plan