New apartments planned for Hibben-Magie site

In April, the University announced plans to dismantle the Hibben and Magie apartments and build a new housing complex for graduate students, comprised of smaller structures but capable of housing 200 more residents. Construction is expected to begin in June 2012 and end in time for students to move in during the summer of 2014.

The new apartments, designed by the Phoenix-based firm Studio Ma, are intended to blend with the sloping woodland site near Lake Carnegie. Plans include a “commons” facility with social spaces and a small fitness center.

American Campus Communities (ACC), a collegiate-housing specialist, is serving as the project developer. John Ziegler, the University’s director of real estate development, said that ACC has surveyed students and studied their housing wants and needs.  

The expanded capacity at Hibben-Magie will eliminate the need for the 301 apartments at the Butler tract, near Harrison Street. Those units, built as temporary housing shortly after World War II, will be taken down, according to Andrew Kane, director of housing and real estate services. There are no immediate plans for the site.

With more than 700 bedrooms at the new Hibben-Magie and others nearby in the Lawrence Apartments and the Graduate College, nearly all of Princeton’s graduate-student housing will be concentrated in the same portion of campus.  

“Building community is something that the graduate students care about, and I know that the dean of the graduate school cares about,” Kane said. “You can’t necessarily manufacture that, but having people living in places where they’re going to see one another and interact informally helps.”