Maple Hall Officially Opens With Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony
Maple Hall, the new apartment-style residential building at New Jersey Institute of Technology, officially opened with a ribbon-cutting ceremony September 29.
University officials began considering residential growth on the Newark campus in 2016, acquired the former Warren Street School in 2019, announced their plans in 2020 and broke ground in 2021, finishing in time for the fall 2022 semester despite challenges posed by the COVID pandemic.
The building has extensive amenities such as a well-equipped outdoor terrace, a videogame room, sustainable construction, numerous single rooms, kitchens with modern appliances, Manhattan skyline views and its own parking garage.
"This is a new wave, I believe, that living on campus is going to look like," Dean of Students Marybeth Boger said. Modern apartment-style living is vastly different from the traditional dormitories she experienced in college, Boger noted. Echoing that sentiment was Andrew Christ, senior vice president of real estate development and capital operations, who attended NJIT and personally lived in Laurel and Cypress halls.
University President Teik C. Lim called it "a momentous accomplishment," crediting his predecessor Joel S. Bloom who attended the ceremony. Lim also noted the contributions of many individuals and organizations from NJIT, the local community and beyond.
Among the outside contributors was Ian Hoffman, senior project manager at Niles Bolton Associates, which served as the building's architects. Hoffman said his team worked closely with NJIT's Hillier College of Architecture & Design, especially in the early planning stages.
"They were present at all of the initial design meetings. We talked about programming spaces. We talked about the type of spaces the students would use or get value out of. They consulted with us about the look of the building," Hoffman said, adding that it was a unique opportunity for his team to design a building into an existing urban space. Most collegiate residence hall projects focus more on landscape design on wide-open green campuses, he said.
Building resident William Otto, a senior mechanical engineering major from Freehold, said he is happy living there.
"I think it's really nice. I was in Laurel before, and before that I was in Redwood. I like having a kitchen," he said. Otto has a single room and multiple suitemates. He especially likes the size of the rooms, which are bigger than those he's seen at other universities, and said he's looking forward to the parking garage which opens soon.
