Chocorua Hall on West Side of campus. (Image credit: panoramio)

It is no secret that SNHU is going through serious renovations of its east side campus with the new Gustafson Building, dormitory, and Athletic Complex, so it’s well overdue that its west side has some updates.

SNHU plans to tear down the Chocorua and Winnisquam buildings that reside on the upper west side of campus and replace them with one five-story dormitory for undergraduate students. These two buildings were built in the 1970s, and have long passed their expiration date.

As a student who lived in Winnisquam, I can say that the buildings are hospitable, but nowhere near ideal for a college living space. The single rooms are terribly small, and the doubles provide almost no room unless you have bunkbeds. Their common rooms west side Residence Building in need of an update are not a welcoming space where floormates can relax and create memories.

Not to mention, all students residing in these buildings are required to do their laundry in Chocorua’s small laundry room that allows only a few loads to be going at a time. Living in these buildings makes students want to spend their time anywhere but in them. They may have been new and state-of-the-art back in the 1970s, but they are not fit to still be housing college students almost fifty years later.

The new building will host pod-style rooms, which are much more inhabitable and comfortable than doubles or singles.

Pod-style rooms are made to be a living space where one can eat, sleep, clean, work, and hangout in a friendly environment, so this change will make the area a much more highly sought area to be in. The building will also feature laundry rooms on each floor with several new social spaces for a host of events.

The plans for this new building are set to right everything wrong that these buildings do in the current age. It should be welcomed as the future SNHU generations will have a brighter experience when living on the west side of campus, an area filled with dormitories dating back nearly half a century ago.

SNHU should prepare plans to update the living spaces on that entire side of the Manchester-Hooksett campus. Other than New Castle Hall and, arguably, some of the apartment buildings, such as Whittier, the living spaces on that side of campus pale in comparison to the east side. They need to be renovated or completely renewed from the ground up like they are doing with Chocorua and Winnisquam.

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