Tufts University to Build New Residence Hall
Tufts University in Boston, Mass., recently announced that a new undergraduate residence hall for juniors and seniors is in the planning stages, according to a university news release. The building will include apartment-style units, ground-floor retail space, and an outdoor plaza featuring a café or restaurant. It will be located across the street from the new Medford/Tufts MBTA station and is scheduled to open in fall 2025.
“In addition to building a beautiful, efficient new residence hall, we are taking this opportunity to energize the Boston Avenue streetscape,” said Rocco DiRico, Tufts’ executive director of government and community relations. “Our objective is to create an inviting place on campus, not just for our students, but also for our neighbors who may be catching a train into Boston and for our visitors who may be seeing Tufts for the first time.”
DiRico said the cities of Medford and Somerville have long requested that the university increase availability of on-campus housing to free up off-campus properties for local families. The university currently guarantees housing to freshman and sophomore students, but not upperclassmen.
Local news reports that the new residence hall will have space for 398 beds. Tufts’ last new on-campus residence hall was built in 2006 and has a capacity of 124 beds for juniors and seniors. Local news also reports that the university’s full-time undergraduate enrollment grew by 25.3 percent between fall 2015 and fall 2021.
The university has increased living space on campus during the last five years, adding 485 beds in bits and pieces. The Community Housing (“CoHo”) project involved renovating 13 wood-frame houses to make room for 139 students; it plans to renovate two more houses by fall 2023, the news release reports.
“Being able to have more juniors and seniors living on campus creates a more robust residential community,” said Camille Lizarríbar, dean of Student Affairs. “It increases opportunities for students at different stages of their Tufts experience to learn from and engage with each other, to forge close friendships, and to share memories that last a lifetime.”
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Matt Jones is senior editor of Spaces4Learning. He can be reached at [email protected].