[Update: Tue., Oct. 31, 2023, 2:45pm] Regarding Munger Hall, UCSB spokesperson Kiki Reyes confirmed on Tuesday that "the campus is moving forward with a separate student housing project in order to meet our LRDP targets of 3,500 additional beds. We anticipate that this project will be funded with traditional debt financing."
[Original story] Though UC Santa Barbara is unwilling to confirm it, Munger Hall may be dead. In an update last week on student housing, the university indicated that two architectural firms were hired to "expand on-campus residential housing for our undergraduate students" by 3,500 beds. At the website the message refers to, the spot where 2,250 of those beds are destined had been reserved for Munger Hall — a highly controversial, 11-story, virtually windowless dormitory, dubbed Dormzilla, that billionaire philanthropist Charlies Munger insisted on designing himself and had promised $200 million toward the estimated $1.6 billion cost.
The location currently holds the school's Facilities Management buildings on the edge of the Goleta Slough and overlooking the Santa Barbara Municipal Airport. A year ago, the Daily Nexus reported that two floors had been removed from the design , which was excoriated by the school's Academic Senate that November out a concern for residents' "physical safety, psychological well-being, and comfort" considering the "small and windowless bedrooms ... [and] extraordinary population density" of 4,500 students.
