Johnson Hall stands vacant, VCU to build new residence hall

Amany Bouali, Contributing Writer

Bri Stevens, Contributing Writer

Johnson Hall made national headlines about its closure in 2021 due to “elevated levels of mold” in 18% of the tested spaces, according to the Associated Press. Over 400 students were told to leave the residence hall and the building was shut down.

Richard Sliwoski, the associate vice president of facilities management at VCU, said there is currently no solid plan to renovate, demolish or repurpose Johnson Hall.

“I would say it’s not going to become a dorm because of the cost that it would take to bring it up to modern standards,” Sliwoski said. “In the future, we are looking at it as perhaps being the administrative building.”

This is the most economical solution, according to Sliwoski. He said the funding for an administrative building would come from the state. The financing for auxiliaries, such as residence halls, would have to come from internal funding from VCU.

“It’s like the STEM building — that was 100% paid for by the state,” Sliwoski said.

Megan Becker, the director of residential life and housing, said the cost per bed would be much higher if VCU renovated Johnson Hall as opposed to building a new residence hall. VCU references what they call their ONE VCU Master Plan when making decisions about real estate, she said.

VCU has a series of renovation plans for the next six years detailing the refurbishment of buildings across campus and a new residence hall, known as the West Grace Street Housing Project, according to the ONE VCU Master Plan website. The new residence hall will be located on Grace Street and Laurel Street.

The West Grace Hall is projected to have 945 beds and will be open to freshmen and upperclassmen students, according to Becker.

“We’re going to continue to look at that housing demand study and that housing master plan this fall semester to better inform us moving forward,” Becker said.

Becker also said VCU does not require students to live on campus their first year and the majority of housing buildings are reserved for upperclassmen.

The project is estimated to open in the fall of 2028 or 2029 and “the construction start date is still being determined,” according to an email statement from Residential Life and Housing.

A new residence hall requires hiring an architect and a construction team and approval from VCU stakeholders, according to Becker.

“It typically takes about two to three years, right from that starting point to actual construction, to the opening of a building,” Becker said.

Joanna Ezzard, a resident assistant in West Grace North, said many of the students in her building are worried about their living situations as VCU’s freshman class continues to grow each year.

Ezzard said she always asks students in her hall if they have plans for their housing the following year.

“A lot of them expressed that it was something that they were the most stressed and unsure about,” Ezzard said.

Nora Schillmaier, a third-year sociology student at VCU, said the university should put money toward fixing up Johnson Hall instead of building a new residence hall.

“It’s just kind of interesting that that’s where they’d rather put their money rather than putting it into something that already exists,” Schillmaier said. “Last year a bunch of freshmen had to live in a hotel because there weren’t enough rooms for them.”

For the 2023-2024 academic year, 80 first-year students lived in the Graduate Hotel due to increased demand for on-campus housing and a freshman class of over 4,500 students, according to WRIC.

Tykeira Rich, a fourth-year psychology student, said she doesn’t think a thousand beds is enough to accommodate the influx of freshmen.

“My incoming year they accepted over a thousand, and some freshmen ended up having to move into the upperclassmen dorms,” Rich said. “They should renovate Johnson and open it back up.”

Jaime Hacinas, a social work graduate student at VCU, said she thinks Johnson Hall should be demolished.

“It’s one of the oldest dorms and I feel like it’s so outdated. And obviously, the mold is a huge issue that’s been going on for a very long time,” Hacinas said. “And so I feel like they should just tear it down and then start new.”