Officials with the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford on Wednesday broke ground for a new residence hall to increase their on-campus capacity to 800 students.

“This new residence hall is yet another milestone on Pitt-Bradford’s journey from good to great,” said Dr. Livingston Alexander, university president. “We envision the new building to be a showplace residential community that supports our vision to be one of the best undergraduate colleges in this part of the country.”

At the early afternoon ceremony, Alexander explained that the increasing enrollment has led to an increasing need for on-campus housing.

“Two years ago, we came together to break ground on the Reed-Coit house,” he said. That residence hall contains 103 beds and is designed as suites in an apartment building rather than as a dorm. This new hall, which as yet is unnamed, will be very similar to that design, but will house 144 students.

“This is yet another milestone on our journey from good to great,” Alexander said. He added the journey began in 1963 with the opening of Pitt-Bradford and continues with the growth and campus enhancements.

The debt service on the $7.3 million residence hall will be paid from the auxiliary services budget, Alexander explained, through fees from residents living on campus.

Craig Hartburg, chairman of the Pitt-Bradford Advisory Board, said he was looking forward to seeing the new residence hall come to fruition.

“I don’t remember college dorms being this nice when I was in college,” the Pitt-Bradford alum joked. He spoke of the importance of providing a positive environment for the students to encourage learning.

“Students will live here and begin to foster relationships that will, in some cases, last a lifetime,” Hartburg said, adding that the dorms will bear witness to the highs and lows of students’ lives on campus.

“The real purpose of all of this is our students,” Alexander said. “They make our campus what it is.”

Brady Colyer, president of the Student Government Association, addressed the crowd from the student’s perspective.

“Think back to your college days,” he invited the audience. “It’s the first time you get to live on your own. You get to leave all the lights on in every room and no one can say anything about it.”

Referring to the new residence hall, and to all the improvements that have been made in recent years at Pitt-Bradford, Colyer said, “The quality of our campus experience is second to none in the region.”

The new residence hall is being built in the area between Blaisdell Hall and the Zora Neale Hurston and Walt Whitman townhouse-style residence halls. The existing parking lot in front of those residence halls will be converted into a courtyard to provide additional green space for the students outside of their housing units.

Site clearing work began earlier this month; the construction is expected to be completed in time for the fall 2008 semester. Over the past 10 years, all of Pitt-Bradford’s on-campus housing has either been newly constructed or renovated.

For the fall 2007 semester, the university will have nearly 700 students living on campus with additional students taking up temporary residence at the Best Western Bradford Inn. All students living at the Inn are expected to move into on-campus apartments by the start of the spring 2008 semester.

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