Ever since making the monumental switch from college to university, Cabrini has seen rapid growth within the school community.
This substantial growth has brought a wealth of new opportunities, students, and facilities to an ever-changing campus.
Currently, Cabrini is undergoing a roughly $25 million expansion as a part of phase two of the campus master plan. Within the second phase includes the goal of making campus more pedestrian-friendly and the addition of a new residence hall and parking structure.
During the summer of 2018, Cabrini partially completed the first portion of the second phase by repaving all roadways in the center of campus. The previous roadways let vehicles drive past Founders Hall, the Mansion, Iadarola Center and Grace Hall, eventually leading out to the Dixon Center parking lot.
Those existing roadways were converted solely to pathways for pedestrians to walk-on, thus restricting any vehicles from the center of campus.
While the majority of the pedestrian-friendly campus goals have been met, more will come with the new residence hall and parking structure.
The brand new South Residence Hall is on-target to open for the upcoming Fall 2019 semester. The 180-bed facility will bring new suite style rooms to the already existing variety of residence halls on campus.
With a lot of talk going around campus regarding what style of living the new residence hall will offer, Assistant Director of Residence Life, Meghan Junor, confirmed that the new hall will be suite style.
“It is more suite style like West, except there are no singles,” Junor said.
“The suites in South Hall are designed to have students who live together to be inconvenienced less,” Brett Buckridge, director of residence life, said. “The suites are designed so multiple people can get ready at the same time. Each suite contains 2 double rooms, a room with a shower and sink, a room with a toilet and sink, and a sink in the common area.”
With the addition of South Residence Hall, there have been some changes in the room selection process for 2019-2020. Residence Life is looking to provide students with options that are accommodating and inclusive for all students.
“Rising sophomores and rising juniors will be able to select South Hall,” Junor said. “Seniors have the opportunity to be part of the Senior Living Experience located in the CAC apartments and the other halls. We want sophomores to have the opportunity to live in South Hall.”
The new residence hall will also come with some convenient amenities for students located right inside the building.
“On each floor there will be different lounges, a common kitchen on the first floor, TV’s and more,” Junor said. “It really should be a cool place to hang out.”
As for the alcohol policy in the new South Residence Hall, students will follow the same alcohol policy regulations as stated in the Student Code of Conduct.
In the past few years, some upperclassmen students worried about the availability of housing for junior and senior years. However, this new residence hall will solve all of those issues moving forward according to Chief of Staff and Vice President of External Affairs, Brian Eury.
“There will not be a problem getting a room,” Eury said.
“This new residence hall does a lot,” Eury said. “It provides us with flexibility and options, so now we are trying to do a major push to get seniors to move back onto campus.”
In addition to the new residence hall, a 130-car parking garage is being constructed right off the King of Prussia Road entrance of campus. The new garage will add much needed parking to the center of campus.
“The parking garage will be open and fully functional by commencement,” Eury said.
The garage will help to alleviate much of the parking congestion present in previous commencement exercises when it opens later this spring.
When the fall 2019 semester kicks off, the parking garage will be open to all students, faculty, staff and visitors to use.
“The thought is at least to leave the ground level open to visitors and ADA possibly and the second and third level will be faculty, staff, and students,” Eury said.
With the addition of the parking garage, a new turn-around and drop-off location will be added directly adjacent to the new structure. This area will be known as east turn-around, as there will be a south turn-around constructed on the opposite end of campus nearest the Mansion.
“The east turn-around will be a little bit of both in terms of a turn around and drop off,” Eury said. “That will be the point of entry for a lot of folks, especially since that is where the shuttle bus will be moving to.”
As for the west turn-around, it will mostly be used for guests of the president and visitors to the Bruckmann Memorial Chapel of Saint Joseph. There will also be some ADA parking locations for those needing it when visiting the chapel.
The east turn-around is anticipated to open to the public with the parking garage before commencement and the west turn-around will be completed some time in early summer after the spring semester concludes.
Moving forward, Cabrini will look to expand upon the current stages of the campus master plan and continue to evolve as a campus. While there are some possible plans and options in the works, nothing is quite set in stone yet.
“We know that at some point the library needs to be renovated to bring it back to what a learning commons looks like on a college campus now,” Eury said.
In addition to the proposed library renovations, another top priority would be adding a student union center in the coming years.
“There is not really a timeline on this,” Eury said. “If resources were to become available, they (library renovations and student union) would be the two biggest priorities.”
