Housing and Residential Life is building two new apartment-style dorms to accommodate on-campus upperclassmen as part of their ongoing housing construction plan.
The dorms will reside on Flagg Road, called Flagg Road North Hall and South Hall, according to Ellen Reynolds, vice president of student affairs at the University of Rhode Island. The north building has already begun construction and is expected to conclude in August 2027, opening fall 2027. Similar to Brookside Hall, it will have 514 rooms, with the option of two and four-bedroom suites, with individual bedrooms, two bathrooms, a shared kitchen and common room.
A wellness space and a housing space will be included in the common area for the dorms, according to a presentation in a student senate meeting from Thomas Cooley, the associate vice president for student affairs. In the wellness space, students can relax and de-stress with bright colored furniture and wide windows. The housing space will be utilized for social events.
“It’s an exciting time for the university,” Cooley said in the meeting. “It’s an exciting time for us.”
The south building will be located behind Brookside Hall in the parking lot area and begin construction in January 2026, according to Reynolds. The building will look the same as North Hall, except it will be smaller and consist of 400 rooms, opening by fall 2028.
URI wants to work with the Narragansett Town Council to decrease the overcrowding of off-campus students, according to Reynolds. Reynolds believes that with the two new buildings, more upperclassmen can be admitted, as every year HRL has a waiting list of upperclassmen looking to live on campus, and may not be able to accommodate all on-campus students.
This way, the town council can keep its three to five-person ordinance, and every URI third and fourth-year student has a place to live, according to Reynolds.
“Our goal, really, with adding these additional beds, will [be to] have more opportunities for juniors and seniors who want to stay on campus,” Reynolds said. “They [can] utilize the services on campus and enjoy the community.”
Every four to five years, URI will deliver new residence halls as part of the housing master plan, according to Reynolds. Student affairs knows there are some halls HRL will no longer invest in, and they will demolish them within the next 15 years, then build new ones.
HRL has added 2,000 rooms since 2012, according to Reynolds. The new rooms have been allocated to Hillside, Eddy, Garrahy, Wiley and Brookside Hall. The halls have been there for at least 10 to 12 years, and have helped with housing students.
The quads in Browning Hall have been used routinely, according to Reynolds. It all depends on what the new incoming class’s needs are, as all first-year students are guaranteed housing. The goal with the quadrants was to minimize the impact of triples, depending on the number of students who come in.
“What I should say is we’re hoping to maintain our enrollment,” Reynolds said. “[However] we’re not really looking to grow our undergraduate enrollment.”
The dorms will impact parking on Flagg Road as the new residence halls will be on part of the lot, according to Reynolds. In the scope of the project, the lot will be unavailable for student parking for two years. To ensure adequate student parking, HRL has redirected them to park in Plains Road lot while construction is underway.
HRL is self-funded and generates revenue from housing rates, according to Cooley’s presentation from the meeting. They take the housing rates and turn them into income for operational coverage for each building. The coverage includes operations, maintenance and debt payments of long-term capital or how much a company uses debt to finance its operations.
“We’re really hopeful that the continued reinvestment will ensure that students who want to stay here have the ability to stay here in housing they want to live in,” Reynolds said.
