Villanova hopes more dorms ease community friction

Villanova University has launched a $200-million-plus building project that will transform two parking lots on Lancaster Avenue into a Gothic "gateway" to campus and include two residence halls, a parking garage, and a performing-arts center.

"It takes these nondescript ugly parking lots that scream commuter school and transforms the university into what it is, a first-class educational institution," said Ken Valosky, vice president of administration and finance, who is in charge of the project.

The chief goal of the plan - which is to be presented to the Radnor Township Board of Supervisors next Monday - is to create more on-campus housing for students, many of whom live in surrounding Main Line towns and often annoy residents with their antics. Just last weekend, Lower Merion police cited eight Villanova students for, among other things, underage drinking, disorderly conduct, and public drunkenness.

Currently, the Catholic university guarantees housing for 4,400 freshmen, sophomores, and juniors, with about 2,000 students living off-campus. The new apartment-style dorms will bring about 1,100 of them back onto campus.

The plan, Valosky said, was not a prelude to increasing enrollment.

"That would defeat the whole purpose of this undertaking," he said.

The project was driven by demands from students and their parents for more university housing, he said. But the school was also "sensitive to the impact of having young college-age students living in neighborhoods."

One area that feels "the impact" is central Bryn Mawr, where bars, burger joints, and a hookah bar on Lancaster Avenue are magnets for the young. Police regularly cite students for drinking violations, noise, and public urination in the early-morning hours when they spill out of the bars and wander through the quiet streets on their way home.

"Some students hurt the quality of life in those neighborhoods," said V. Scott Zelov, a Lower Merion Township commissioner, who applauded the new construction.

"If more lived on campus, they would be headed in that direction as opposed to walking through the neighborhoods" when the bars close, he said.

But the construction project is more than a way to corral fun-loving students.