ASU breaks ground on 16-story dorm in downtown Phoenix

Construction has begun on Arizona State University's Downtown Residence Hall and Entrepreneurship Center, the university's largest downtown Phoenix development project to date.

As ASU's downtown student population has exploded, housing opportunities have not kept up.

According to the most recent data available, there were 11,584 students attending the downtown campus in 2018, and a single downtown dorm.

The new dorm will be situated on a 0.82-acre plot on the southwest corner of Fillmore Street and First Avenue. At 284,000 gross square feet, it will have 16 floors. Thirteen will be dedicated to student housing, with an estimated 530 students slated to live there.

The project will cost approximately $118 million.

Capstone Development Partners, a development company specializing in student housing, will oversee consruction. Capstone Development also oversaw construction of Taylor Place, currently the only ASU residence hall in downtown Phoenix.

ASU currently partners with several apartment complexes to provide additional housing for students downtown, including the nearby Muse Apartments and Roosevelt Point.

ASU sophomore Emmanuel Morales moved to downtown Phoenix after switching his major to criminal justice. The university offered him housing at Muse Apartments.

"It's great that ASU is building a new residence hall," Morales said. "Downtown (campus) has very limited housing and I know many students who could not live here because the housing rooms were completely occupied."

Morales said the new residence hall is an opportunity for ASU to improve housing by giving students increased privacy and nicer dorm room options.

"The best way to improve housing is by making some of the rooms more spacious," Morales said. "Some housing facilities have very little privacy."

In years prior, ASU had been forced to offer temporary student housing at the downtown Phoenix Sheraton Hotel while waiting for space to free up at overfilled residence halls.

Rick Naimark, ASU's vice president of Program Development Planning, said the new residence hall was also part of the university's interest in "expanding some academic programs to downtown."

"This is exactly the right timing for us," Naimark said. "We want to build residence halls that fill up and don't go empty."

Naimark highlighted the new residence hall's inclusion of spaces designed for entrepreneurship and innovation.

"You can wake up at 2 a.m., get out of bed, not even leave your building and go work on a creative idea," Naimark said.

ASU did not provide details regarding the specific equipment that will be installed as part of these spaces.

The additional dorm rooms will also mean more opportunities to bring other programs downtown.

Some programs from the university’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts will be relocated to the downtown campus upon completion of the dorm, which is expected for the Fall 2021 semester.

"It's the center of the city," Naimark said. "There's a great scene for emerging artists down here."