Students who want to live on campus may have more options in renovated and new university housing in the future. University Housing director Paul Evans said he and other city officials have started talking about expanding and improving university housing available to students near the downtown area.

Evans said there is a definite need to improve housing options around campus.

“The newest university housing buildings are almost 40 years old. We are looking to renovate those buildings to make them good for 40 more years,” Evans said.

The buildings Evans refers to are the Southeast residence halls on campus — Ogg, Sellery and Witte. He said renovations to these buildings would include creating more areas for students to gather and perhaps expanding the size of floor dens and individual rooms.

Evans said these renovations would update the housing and make it more conducive to student life today.

Evans said such interior changes to the buildings would result in larger but fewer individual rooms for students, leading to the need for new buildings. These buildings would also house students displaced during renovations to the Southeast residence halls.

New buildings will also help alleviate the problem of students being put on waiting lists for university housing, Evans said.

“I think there are more freshmen that would like to live in university housing than can right now,” he said.

Although he’s not sure where these new buildings would be built, Evans said keeping university buildings on or near campus makes sense.

Others think the housing question is more focused on quality rather than quantity of housing.

Mark Olinger, director of the Department of Planning and Development for the city of Madison, said there is a general need for updated university housing.

“This is more of a quality-of-life, an amenity-level issue for students, because with the increased building in the downtown area, I don’t think availability is the question,” Olinger said.

District 5 Alder Tom Powell also said he thinks renovating university housing is a good idea. Powell said he’s noticed desirable living arrangements in other universities, such as UW-La Crosse, which feature more privacy options.

“La Crosse’s housing has more central living space and more single rooms, rather than doubles. I think that’s a good idea. People like privacy,” Powell said.

Ben Krautkramer, a law student at UW, isn’t impressed with current university housing options but is looking for housing alternatives.

“If the university offered quality affordable housing, I think there would be enough students, myself included, who would be interested,” Krautkramer said.

If new housing were built, Powell said he doesn’t know where it would be. The university owns storefront property on University Avenue and some open space on the west side of campus, all possible building locations for new university housing, Powell said.

Powell, Olinger and Evans all said plans for renovations and new university housing are still in their infancy, so students shouldn’t expect changes anytime soon.