Close to three years after it closed to students, a staple of the Tempe campus will reopen this fall with a new look.
Manzanita Hall, which first opened as a women's freshman dorm in 1967, was home to about 1,000 students each year for 40 years before closing in early 2011 for much-needed renovations. Construction during the past few years has completely gutted the building.
The building's bedrooms are being expanded, leaving space for just 816 beds. The rooms will be divided into suites, with either two or three bedrooms and one shared bathroom or four bedrooms and two shared bathrooms.
Political science senior Scott Ridout, who lived in the hall in fall 2010, said the rooms were small but that the residence hall didn't seem to be in bad shape otherwise.
"It certainly was older and more cramped compared to the other dorms," he said.
However, Ridout said he preferred living in Manzanita to its neighbors in the Tempe campus's North Neighborhood: Palo Verde East, Palo Verde West and Palo Verde Main.
"I thought it was better than all the Palo Verde dorms," he said.
He said the one thing that he most wished was fixed were the "notoriously slow" elevators that were necessary in the 15-floor dorm.
Two of the hall's four elevators are being completely rebuilt, while the other two are being replaced with lifts like those used in hospitals to facilitate moving in and out.
They'll be used when this year's occupants, a co-ed group of freshmen in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, move in mid-August.
The design plan relies on the creation of residential neighborhoods like those in ASU's newer dorms, such as the Barrett, the Honors College and Hassayampa Academic Village on the Tempe campus, Taylor Place on the Downtown campus, Century Hall on the Polytechnic campus and Casa de Oro on the West campus.
The contractor renovating Manzanita, Hardison/Downey Construction Inc., also completed Casa de Oro and the Barrett complex, as well as the apartments Vista del Sol and Villas at Vista del Sol.
Along with renovating bedrooms and removing asbestos, the construction is adding a fitness center, an indoor workout room, a movie theater and an outdoor basketball and sand volleyball court.
The hall's first-floor cafeteria is also being remodeled.
Alumnus Spencer Huggett, who graduated in May, said he had a lot of fun living in Manzanita his freshman year.
He attributed this fun to the people he met, and not the living conditions.
"It wasn't really the most sanitary place to live," Huggett said. "We had asbestos in some places."
After 40 years and housing about 40,000 residents, the dorm had also picked a distinctive smell, he said.
"It kind of smelled funny," he said. "It was just this pungy smell, kind of hard to describe, but I could still recognize it if I smelled it now. Someone who lived there would know it."
By the fall of 2010, when film senior Kyle Herbert moved in, the hall housed few students. Renovations were planned to start that year, and Manzanita served as temporary housing for students until space in other halls opened.
Few rooms were filled when Herbert lived there, and he said the dorm was obviously in bad shape.
"The elevators reminded me of something you'd find in project or lower-income area housing," he said. "The bathrooms looked like public restrooms. Dust would blow out of our vents. We'd have to clean parts of roof or other things that would fall on our beds."
The hall had reached the point where it needed to be completely renovated or torn down, Herbert said, adding that he's glad it's being rebuilt.
"Manzy's a staple of ASU," he said. "A lot of my friends' parents who went to ASU, even if they didn't live at Manzy, they definitely remember coming here."
Reach the managing editor at julia.shumway@asu.edu or follow @JMShumway on Twitter.
Like The State Press on Facebook and follow @statepress on Twitter.
