Gannon University is adding a new residence hall to campus: South Hall. 

This residence hall will be the newest residence building on Gannon’s Erie campus since North Hall was built a little over 10 years ago. 

Alyssa MacLefko, a sophomore cybersecurity major, said she’s pleased the university is adding to its stock of housing options. 

“I believe that having another building on campus will allow for more students to be on campus as well as allowing for more flexibility in choices for students who are living on campus,” she said. 

South Hall will consist of many up-to-date and unique features compared to the other residence halls that currently exist on campus. 

Denise Golden, Residence Life director, said construction on the converted 40,000-square-foot office building is keeping pace with what the university envisioned. 

“Construction is still on track and moving how we planned, and the building is planned to open for fall of 2022,” Golden said. 

The new building, located at 155 W. Eighth St., previously served as the Regional Center for Workforce Excellence. Gannon acquired the building and the adjacent parking garage in 2020. Golden said the new residence hall will be available on the MyHousing portal for upper-level students and rising sophomores to apply and live in for the upcoming school year during the university’s February/March application process. 

This new hall will be a suite-style building with four floors, allowing a total of 95 students to live there. Most of the dorm rooms will be doubles but there will also be some triples and singles as well. 

All these units will feature full-sized beds, a bathroom and living room, and each roommate will have their own room. 

“We really took what the students were looking for and made it our main focus of creating and planning this new building,” said Golden. 

“What most people were looking for consisted of single bedrooms, air conditioning, bigger beds and we were able to deliver these needs and wants.” 

Given all the modern amenities, some students are concerned that South Hall will be so much in demand that the existing residence halls might be overlooked by those looking for a place to live on campus. But MacLefko dismissed that possibility. 

“I do not think that other dorms will be forgotten as each dorm building has a different style of living and room layouts,” she said. “I believe that this dorm will only offer another style of living for students. 

“Each room was focused to have more room for beds, so instead of having each room have their own mini-kitchen, we are putting gourmet kitchens in the middle of each floor.” 

Since the kitchen is community style, you can either rent or bring your own micro-fridge for your own individual dorm room. 

Golden referred to the basement as “the cool hangout spot.” This will be the only spot in the building where laundry will be, but there will be areas where students can congregate while waiting for laundry or just get out of their rooms.  

This area will consist of lounge areas, storage units for residents to rent and study spots. 

Golden said this building will feature a more unique layout compared to other dorm buildings since it was an office building and not an apartment or living quarters. 

“While building this hall, we have been working with the bones of an existing building, and that posed a challenge, but a very cool one,” she said. 

“We were able to re-envision what we could do with rooms — what can we keep, what can we preserve, and how do we use these things to have a decent amount of space for residents and overall have a cool space.” 

 CHLOE PALMIERE
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