Expanding Housing: NJIT's Rebuild of Oak Hall Will More Than Double Its Beds
New Jersey Institute of Technology is rebuilding its second oldest residence hall to meet a burgeoning demand for housing at the growing public university.
The new Oak Hall on Summit Street in Newark will contain 453 beds in 154 units — more than double the current totals. The units will take the form of apartments for either two or four students, complete with kitchens, living rooms and bathrooms. There will also be single units for resident assistants.
The 15-story building will also feature an array of common areas, including a lounge for studying, a game room, conference rooms for meetings and a laundry room.
Creating capacity
When it opens as planned, in 2027, the new dorm will add 275 beds to the university’s 48-acre campus — nearly half of what’s needed by 2030 when enrollment is projected to reach 15,000, up from about 13,000 today, according to Andrew Christ, NJIT’s senior vice president of real estate development and capital operations.
Roughly a quarter of all current students live on campus, with the university’s five residence halls about 95% filled.
“Being a more residential campus is important to the continued growth of NJIT,” Christ explained. “Also, we’re becoming more of a national university that recruits students not only from New Jersey but across the country. Having modern, comfortable and accommodating living spaces is a key factor in those efforts.”
Construction method
Demolition of the existing Oak Hall — a 1913 industrial building that NJIT converted into housing and opened in 1984 — is scheduled to begin in June, after the end of the spring semester. For safety and practical reasons, the residence hall next door, Laurel Hall, will close for the summer. For example, the two buildings share a heating, ventilation and air conditioning system.
NJIT is using a design-build method of construction, where the general contractor (Terminal Construction in Wood-Ridge, N.J.) and the architectural design firms (Niles Bolton Associates in Atlanta and Netta Architects in Mountainside, N.J.) work together under a single contract. NJIT selected that team after a three-month search that came down to three finalists.
Parts of the construction, including the ground floor slab, will utilize a new low-carbon code developed by Matthew Adams, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at NJIT’s Newark College of Engineering.
“Limiting the global warming potential of concrete requires the use of innovative concrete mixture designs, similar to those that we study in our laboratory,” Adams explained. “As the building is still in the design phase, we don't know exactly what concrete mixtures will be utilized, but they will likely include a reduction in total cement paste content and replacing a portion of the cement with something that behaves like cement such as slag, which is a byproduct of steel manufacturing.”
Part of campus upgrades
NJIT’s Board of Trustees decided to build a new hall rather than renovate the existing one because the facade of Oak Hall has deteriorated in recent years and a renovation still would not have significantly increased its capacity.
Current residents will move to other dorms on campus or an apartment-style dorm at Rutgers-Newark that’s across the street from NJIT’s Eberhardt Hall. NJIT is renting space there for up to 250 students, which also allows for additional residential student growth, according to Christ.
To finance the new Oak Hall as well as renovations in Fenster Hall and the Campus Center, NJIT is expected to borrow money in the form of municipal bonds that can be repaid across 30 years. The Fenster project will convert 30,000 square feet of office space into classrooms and labs and Campus Center work under consideration would improve circulation, update food offerings and add new furniture. Final approval for the borrowing will come before the board in April.
Tale of the tape
New Oak Hall
- 453 beds in 154 units
- Apartments for two or four students
- 15 floors
- 191,000 square feet
- To open in 2027
Old Oak Hall
- 180 beds in 74 units
- Rooms for two or three students and apartments for five
- 8 floors
- 53,500 square feet
- Opened in 1984
