Construction begins on new 600-bed UM dorm (2024)

The University of Montana broke ground on Tuesday on its first new residence hall in 30 years, a project the Missoula flagship says will offset increased housing needs that have come with enrollment growth in recent years.

The university’s new 171,000-square-foot residence hall is tentatively set to open in the fall of 2027, boasting 600 beds. It’s being built on the southwest end of campus, next to Pantzer Hall.

“If there's one issue that Montanans understand right now, it’s the importance of accessible, safe, affordable housing,” UM President Seth Bodnar said on Tuesday, nodding to Montana’s housing shortage and rising cost of living. “Our students feel that challenge particularly acutely,” Bodnar said.

The new hall, which has yet to be named, will have the largest bed count on campus, with mostly double rooms.

It will have 17 “communities” inside the building, each of which will have intentional design layouts to incorporate social gathering spaces, private areas and study groups,UM’s Housing Executive Director John Nugent said.

A large multi-purpose area will be included in the space, along with a community kitchen and more modern features like an automated mail system and “smart lounges” (spaces with updated technology).

McKenlie Ballard, a UM senior, spoke about the role residence halls play in fostering a sense of community for students. She previously worked as a resident assistant at Aber Hall and now is the community development coordinator at UM housing.

“Looking back to my freshman and sophom*ore years as a resident in the residence halls, I truly cannot imagine what my UM experience would be like without living in Jesse Hall,” she said. “Talk about an unforgettable experience.”

As of Tuesday, 1,976 students were registered for residence halls for the upcoming 2024-2025 academic year. That’s up by 55 students from last year, according to data from university officials.

Of those nearly 2,000 students, 1,368 are freshmen, 518 are upperclassmen and 90 are new transfer students.

Bodnar said the housing crunch has been exacerbated by three years of enrollment growth at the university and the new dorm aims to address that.

“It's going to allow us to meet that demand, as well as provide flexibility to make better informed, long-term decisions about how to best utilize our housing supply here on campus,” Bodnar said. “Which, of course, affects not just our students, but affects the entire Missoula community.”

He said the dorms are part of a larger “infrastructure refresh” on campus.

Construction for the new dorm costs roughly $70 million, according to UM Director of Strategic Communications Dave Kuntz.

As enrollment grows, the largest increase for housing demand has come from first-year students, Nugent said. There’s also been a slight shift in upper division students wanting to live on campus. The count of housing applications for the upcoming academic year is the most the university has had since well before the pandemic.

“We are seeing that increased demand, and trying to understand and hear from those students what they’re looking for,” he said.

Parking

Construction on the new hall will encroach on campus parking to a degree, which is a long-standing issue at UM. University officials previously presented parking plans to the Missoula City Council in the spring.

It will take away the large parking lot on the southwest end of campus, Kuntz said, but UM’s goal is to have a “net-zero” impact via adding spaces at other parts of campus.

About 214 parking spots have been added this summer, Kuntz said, which is roughly equivalent to the number of spots being taken away during construction of the new residence hall. Recent parking additions include 113 spaces at the university tennis courts, along with a few dozen more around other parts of campus.