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<\/a>PITTSBURGH \u2014<\/p>\nPlans to expand student housing at the University of Pittsburgh will move forward. <\/p>\n
This week, the City of Pittsburgh Planning Commission gave approval to a 9-story, first-year residence hall with a ground-floor restaurant at Fifth Avenue and Ruskin Avenue in North Oakland. <\/p>\n
As shown in renderings from PJ Dick, VMDO, and Kimmel Architecture, the L-shaped building will wrap around the Music Building and will neighbor Ruskin Hall. <\/p>\n
“It\u2019s definitely necessary because they’ve admitted a lot more first-year students,\u201d said Ryan Berger, a rising senior at Pitt. <\/p>\n
The need for more housing at Pitt has been a recent topic of conversation after the university leased a nearby Hampton Inn<\/a> last school year. <\/p>\n \u201cIt seemed like, for such a big school, not having a place to put people seems like, at least to me, like an obvious problem that you\u2019d be able to solve quickly,\u201d Chuck Banks said. <\/p>\n Banks, a rising senior at Pitt, was one of the hundreds of students who stayed in the hotel when he transferred to Pitt his junior year. <\/p>\n \u201cDefinitely a longer walk. Not really involved in campus as much because that’s away from all the main stuff. So, a little more on my own, I’d say, than being in an on-campus housing,\u201d Banks said of the experience.<\/p>\n