The Savannah College of Art and Design is forging ahead with plans for an $85 million makeover of its underclassmen dorms located off West Boundary Street, a complex of repurposed hotels with Spongebob yellow doors more commonly known to students as the Weston and Dyson residence halls.
SCAD representatives appeared before the planning commission Tuesday to get approval for changes to their general development plan, last OK’d by the Metropolitan Planning Commission in 2010.
Attorney Harold Yellin, representing SCAD, said the new plans include eight five-story buildings with under-unit parking, a separate four-story parking garage, a fitness center, pool and athletic field. He said the new footprint will allow for about 48 percent green space and is more visually appealing.
“Presumably we could have more buildings and reduce that green space — we don’t want to do that. … We happen to like our green space,” said Yellin.
Meanwhile, an apartment hotel for the site was scrapped.
SCAD had previously been approved for a 25-foot height variance to build up to 60 feet, but Yellin said an additional 3 feet were
needed due to flooding concerns.
SCAD will demolish all but the dining hall in four phases, beginning this October, with a completion date of 2017. The new dorms will house 2,037 beds in total, an increase of 900 over its previous plan and about 1,200 more than current capacity.
The plan includes 1,029 parking spaces, provided through a combination of below-unit parking, 127 surface spaces and the parking garage, which will have five levels of parking including the rooftop.
Not only has SCAD’s enrollment increased but the college now faces stiffer competition amid an influx in amenity-packed privately developed student housing, catering to the art college’s transient and affluent population.
One West Victory by Atlanta development firm Jamestown opens to students this year, adding 114 apartments. Another five-story student housing complex by a Charlotte-based developer is proposed for a lot on Selma Street overlooking the Interstate 16 flyover.
Many members of the Metropolitan Planning Commission expressed concerns of what an increase in residential density and cars may mean for the already congested traffic arteries of Oglethorpe and MLK Boulevard nearby.
“We’ve got to take a serious look at this,” said board member Timothy Mackey. “At 5 o’clock in the evening, there’s traffic coming off the Talmadge Bridge and people are using Boundary because MLK is backed up ... and they use that to get onto I-16. During those key times, that becomes a serious place to get through.”
Board member Ben Farmer said his concern was that the sum total of several large development projects — including a Kessler hotel complex on west River Street, a proposed city arena on Stiles and Gwinnett and the potential removal of the I-16 flyover — could equate to a quagmire for downtown commuters and locals.
“A lot of projects are being developed separately, but they’re not really separate,” said Farmer. “If everyone goes at it independently, and not thinking about the flyover and other factors, we have a perfect storm here pretty soon.”
“I’m just concerned here because you can’t just keep pouring everything into a funnel, because that’s what we’re doing … it’s scary,” he said.
Yellin said the college was paying for its own traffic analysis and that many students use alternative forms of transportation such as bikes or SCAD buses.
“Unlike most petitioners that come before you, we’re the only petitioner that has its own bus system,” said Yellin.
Neil Dawson, SCAD’s architect for the project, said they may also consider putting in a traffic light at Turner and Boundary streets and turn one entryway to the dorms into a right-turn, exit only to avoid bottlenecking on Oglethorpe Avenue.
“We can only control what’s within our control, obviously,” said Dawson. “We feel like we’re over-parked and overstating the amount of traffic that will be generated by the site.”
In approving the amended plan, the planning commission asked SCAD to complete its traffic study before returning before the board.