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‘Dormzilla’ Gets a Little Less Monstrous By  Katherine Mangan October 31, 2022 Courtesy of UCSBA drawing of the original 11-story Munger Hall planned for the U. of California at Santa Barbara

A massive, largely windowless dormitory complex, dubbed “Dormzilla” by its critics, won’t loom quite as tall or arise as early as planned over the skyline of the University of California at Santa Barbara. Bowing to pressure from the community and concerns about air traffic from a nearby airport, the university has agreed to cut two floors off the design. Instead of housing just over 4,500 students on 11 stories, Munger Hall will accommodate 3,500 students on nine.

“The decision to move from 11 floors to nine floors allows us to both meet the campus’s housing goal for our current student enrollment and to respond to input from our community about size and density,” a campus spokeswoman, Kiki Reyes, wrote in an email. It will also help avoid “potential issues related to airport traffic” from Santa Barbara Airport.

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A massive, largely windowless dormitory complex, dubbed “Dormzilla” by its critics, won’t loom quite as tall or arise as early as planned over the skyline of the University of California at Santa Barbara. Bowing to pressure from the community and concerns about air traffic from a nearby airport, the university has agreed to cut two floors off the design. Instead of housing just over 4,500 students on 11 stories, Munger Hall will accommodate 3,500 students on nine.

“The decision to move from 11 floors to nine floors allows us to both meet the campus’s housing goal for our current student enrollment and to respond to input from our community about size and density,” a campus spokeswoman, Kiki Reyes, wrote in an email. It will also help avoid “potential issues related to airport traffic” from Santa Barbara Airport.

Because of the remaining approvals the project needs, Munger Hall is unlikely to open before late 2026, instead of 2025, as originally planned.

Charlie Munger, the 98-year-old benefactor who’s largely responsible for the design of Munger Hall, had made it clear, in an interview last year with The Chronicle, that if the university insisted on changes, he would take back the $200 million he’d pledged toward the building. But, interviewed last week, he said that while “of course” the university had consulted with him, he had no objection to removing a couple of floors if it would alleviate flight-safety concerns.

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Munger, Warren Buffett’s business partner and vice chair of Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate, has no formal training as an architect, but has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to universities, including the University of Michigan and Stanford University, for buildings that he plays a large role in designing. The most controversial feature in Munger Hall is the lack of windows in 94 percent of the bedrooms. Instead, they will have “virtual” windows — upgraded versions of the simulated portals on Disney cruise ships. The windows will feature a “circadian rhythm control system” that alters the lighting levels and colors to mimic natural daylight.

The single bedrooms will be grouped into eight-person suites that share a kitchen, a living room, and study spaces. Eight suites will make up a “house,” and there will be eight houses per floor. The building, as designed, also will offer extensive amenities, including a rooftop gym, game rooms, and a market. To help win over skeptics, the university has offered tours of a mockup of one of Munger Hall’s houses in a local warehouse.

Although eight out of 10 of the nearly 1,000 people who’ve toured the mockup building gave it positive or neutral reviews, Reyes said, the university acknowledges that “communal living and some design features will not suit every student.” Munger Hall will open as an option for upperclass students.

Reyes said there’s no definite timeline for approval of the project by university and state officials. The university is preparing to file an environmental-impact report, after which it will need to wait for more public feedback and another review by the University of California’s Board of Regents and the California Coastal Commission.

“At this point, if everything happened smoothly, the earliest that construction could start would be the summer of 2023,” Reyes wrote, “but we are still taking community input and do not want to get out in front of the process.” Construction is expected to take 40 months to complete.

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‘Nothing but Sense’

Asked about opposition to his building design, Munger said that, as far as he can tell, most people are solidly behind it. As for the ones who aren’t, he pinpointed one major complaint in characteristically blunt fashion. “They think some goddamn Republican billionaire is telling the university what to do,” he said. “It’s all right. I can handle it. We’re trying to do it right. Enormous time and effort have gone into it.”

Munger still harbors bitterness toward the university’s consulting architect, Dennis J. McFadden, who resigned in protest over plans to go ahead with the dorm, which he called “unsupportable from my perspective as an architect, a parent, and a human being.”

“Modern life is full of people clamoring about things they know nothing about,” Munger said. “This [Munger Hall] makes nothing but sense.”

The building, Munger said, “will help relieve a huge shortage of beds across the University of California system. A lot of students will be housed on four acres.” Four acres might not sound like a small footprint, but it’s probably a lot smaller than alternatives for housing 3,500 students, he suggested. Traditional residential housing for that many students would require more than 30 acres, Reyes said.

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“I wouldn’t be doing these buildings if I wasn’t 99.9 percent sure that students would like them and be better off in them,” Munger added.

Critics’ complaint that bedrooms without windows could harm students’ mental health is “highly speculative,” Munger said. “I’ve never heard of anyone who committed suicide because they didn’t have a window in their bedroom,” he said. As he sees it, students are more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression if they’re forced to share a bedroom with “an unrelated stranger,” he said.

Research has shown links between sunlight and mental health, including one study that found an association between a lack of natural sunlight and reduced cognitive function in people with depression.

Having private rooms, even small ones, is a luxury across a university system that’s been forced to house students in triples and keep many more on wait lists for housing, Munger said. Hundreds of students have also been housed in hotels because of a severe shortage of affordable housing.

“Of course, I like windows in bedrooms, but this is a game of trade-offs,” Munger said. Keeping bedrooms small and common spaces large will encourage students to mingle with classmates and learn from one another, he said. “We want to get students close to each other so they can educate each other. The campus is too spread out.”

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The Santa Barbara campus had some 20,000 students in 2010 when it negotiated a long-range development plan with neighboring communities and Santa Barbara County. It called for enrollment to grow no more than 1 percent a year through 2025, when it would be capped at 25,000. The university also promised to provide 5,000 more student beds, along with more housing for faculty and staff members. So far, it’s added 1,500 in other housing complexes, so a nine-story Munger Hall could supply the 3,500 it still needs.

Last year the city of Goleta sued the university over its alleged failure to provide the housing it had committed to. The city has complained that the influx of students has driven up housing costs and strained public services. Kelly Hoover, a spokeswoman for the city, wrote in an email that she couldn’t comment on the changes in the structure or timing of Munger Hall because of the litigation. “We continue to hope,” she wrote, “that UCSB finds a way, as soon as possible, to alleviate the housing impacts the city faces as a result of the insufficient student housing on campus.”

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication. FacilitiesFinance & OperationsHealth & Wellness Katherine Mangan Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, student success, and job training, as well as free speech and other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at [email protected].