UM Student Housing Village subcontract awarded to DAR

DAR Finish Specialties, Inc. has been awarded subcontract from NET Construction, Inc. to install grout filled hollow metal frames for a University of Miami's $100M student housing expansion.

"The University of Miami plans to add 1,104 student housing beds, plus a host of campus amenities, in a $100 million project.

The City of Coral Gables’ Development Review Committee will consider the nonprofit university’s application on Friday. The 515,220-square-foot project was designed by Arquitectonica.

It would be located on the 8.6-acre site between Lake Osceola and Stanford Drive near the University Center and Eaton Residential College. It would replace a parking lot, and the connection between Dickinson Drive and Merrick Street would be eliminated. In their place, there would be a garden and green space at the base of the dorms, with breezeways between them.

'It is designed to foster a stronger sense of on-campus community for the university’s resident population, to help recruit more students to live on campus and, relatedly, to retain students on campus who would otherwise look to move off-campus during their collect career,' attorney Jeff Bass, who represents UM, wrote in the application.

The application said the new dorms would both reduce traffic around campus and reduce the need for parking spaces because more students would live on campus. The university would replace some of the lost parking lot spaces by adding 60 parking lifts to the Pavia garage.

UM had enrollment of 16,801 in fall 2016.“The project is designed to serve as far more than just a dormitory. Indeed, it is designed as a hub for student life and campus-based activity,” Bass wrote in the application.

The project would consist of 23 interconnected buildings with green roofs and two elevated courtyards. The bottom two floors would be dedicated to amenities, including a learning center, the Launch Pad for start up companies, a 200-seat auditorium, multi-purpose rooms, a curated “warehouse" for programming such as rotating exhibits, retail, micro theater and food service, a print shop, a bike shop and a recreation room.

Above the amenities, there would be five levels of dorms. Social rooms and study lounges would be included in the upper floors."

By Josh Baumgard

Curbed Miami