UW-Whitewater’s Residence Life Committee is looking to build three to four residence halls between now and 2031, at which time Wells Hall will be demolished.

“Wells is not very ADA [American’s with Disabilities Act] friendly or handicap accessible because the hallways and rooms are very small and there’s really no way for us to adjust it,” Whitewater Student Government Sen. Jeff Winter said. “It’s actually at a high cost of maintenance.”

Current plans are to build a new residence hall in 2016, with the next two to three to follow in four-year segments.

There are four sites in consideration for the first new residence hall, with the most likely being next to the parking lot behind Esker.

The committee hopes the addition of new residence halls will help solve some of the housing problems on campus.

“Currently, [the university] is leasing a couple of off-campus apartment buildings,” Winter said. “Our goal is to provide more space; we want all the students who want to be with Residence Life to be able to live on campus.”

WSG Vice President Jon Jensen said he hopes the new residence halls will give the campus room to expand.

“This last summer we had a lot of problems with finding room for transfer students, and I think this will alleviate some of that once we actually build a new residence hall,” Jensen said.

The committee also hopes to build a new dining hall in the basement of the future residence hall, which would eliminate the need to keep Esker. The dining hall would also serve as a banquet hall.

“Currently the largest space for events that we have is the Hamilton Room which only seats about 400 and we host events on campus already that are larger than 400 and we don’t have adequate space for them,” Winter said. “The goal is to have space on campus where we could accommodate large events.”