ASU to Open Major New Dining Center

Arizona State University broke ground on a $10.1 million, 20,000-sq.ft. dining center, as well as a $13.4 million, 318-bed residence hall at its Polytechnic campus in Mesa on June 21. Both facilities, part of a public/private partnership between ASU and Inland American Communities, will open for the beginning of the Fall 2012 semester.

The ASU Polytechnic dining facility will be located on the north side of newly extended Texas Mall, immediately north of the Student Union, and will be a single-story facility designed to serve up to 1,200 students. It will consist of a 350-student dining room, a private dining area, open cooking servery and exterior seating on three sides that will offer connections to the existing campus. In addition, the facility will have a small grocery store and café.

The residence hall will be a three-story, 84,657 square-foot residence hall that will be located on the northeast corner of the future extended Backus and Texas Malls. The building will be arranged with two 150-bed, three-story residence wings, one each on the north and south edge of a landscaped central courtyard. The two buildings will be linked together by a one-story common area that contains a lobby, information desk, administration offices, resident community kitchen, two multipurpose rooms, group study room and a “tinker” room which will function as a small engineering studio.

Each 150-bed resident wing will have three student activity lounges – one on each floor for pool, gaming and table tennis. In addition, each floor of each wing will have a laundry area and two quiet study rooms.

The dining facility will be a LEED silver building and will be a critical social linkage between the freshman housing on the west and the student recreation center on the east. It will be managed by Aramark.

“The addition of a new residence hall and dining facility at ASU Polytechnic will help us realize our vision for this campus as a place where students from Arizona and abroad can come to live and learn in a truly innovative environment,” says ASU President Michael M. Crow. “For first-year students, it is particularly important that they live in a place they can call ‘home,’ where they can be supported by the university and each other.”