UF plans athletic dorm as part of $2.2 billion campus overhaul

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- The University of Florida should get a serious makeover in the next decade.

On Saturday, the Gainesville Sun reported that UF's capital improvement plans for the campus call for upgrades and renovations projected to cost $2.2 billion over the next five to 10 years.

Among those upgrades will be the construction of a new athletic and general student dorm. That building should significantly enhance the experience of student-athletes, who are mostly housed in the Keys and Springs dorms on campus, two buildings which are fairly dated when compared to several Power 5 and SEC peers.

The new athletic dorms would be built across the street from Hume Hall on Museum Road, about a block south of where a planned $65 million stand-alone football facility will be constructed.

The athletic dorm will have 500 beds and will be constructed along with a new honors college meant to attract more of the nation's top students. Those two projects are estimated to cost $60 million, with a goal of completion by fall 2023.

Florida's stand-alone football facility is expected to be completed by the end of 2021. The football facility calls for a 130,000-square-foot facility that will be connected to the current indoor practice facility. That will allow players the flexibility to use the turf indoor field for athletic training in close proximity to the weight room, a luxury the Gators don't currently have with the weight room housed underneath Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.

The stand-alone facility will also allow Florida to maximize efficiency with the location of the locker rooms, training rooms, coaches offices, team meeting rooms and more all laid out in a more sensible manner.

South of the stand-alone facility the current plan is to include green space, with the potential for future development in that area, which adjoins Stadium Road.

The Gators are also currently upgrading the locker room inside Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, which will serve as a gameday-only locker room once the new football facility is built. Further renovations to the locker room are expected once the stand-alone facility is completed, allowing for some of the football offices and team meeting rooms to be relocated, freeing up more space underneath the south end zone at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.

All in all, Florida's facilities -- and campus overall, if you read the Sun's documentation of the planned $2.2 billion in campus upgrades -- should be top of the line in the relatively near future.

"I've mentioned this to coach (Dan) Mullen, in 18 months, when they're at their practice field and they have recruits watching practice, they're going to turn around over their shoulder and they're going to have cranes in the air and they're going to have steel going up and there's going to be signs of progress," athletics director Scott Stricklin said in December.

"Even though the facility's not going to be done, it's going to send a pretty powerful message, because the kids that we'll be recruiting at that point, they're going to be in that building. And they'll actually be able to see it coming out of the ground.

"I think it's one of the components that sends a message about what's important to that university, just like the caliber of your coaches, your fan support, the brand or prestige of playing for a certain university based on their history of success. Facilities is a big part of that.

"Three years from now we're going to sit back and we're going to be really glad that we took the time to do it the right way and do it the way we did and do it in a way that can impact our program positively for generations to come."