Last week construction began on CMU’s newest project, the Renaissance Village dorms, with the groundbreaking for the first of four planned buildings.

The first building will go up along the east side of Cannell Avenue and the south side of Texas Avenue. The rest of Renaissance Village will eventually fill the entire block.

“The institution and the architects that we worked with did student focus groups to gather information about what students would prefer,” Director of Media Relations Dana Nunn said. “There was strong support for that kind of a layout.”

The total cost for the building is going to be around $9 million. This includes the construction cost, $7.6 million, and an additional $1.5 million to purchase dorm furniture.

“The way it works with student housing is basically the university borrows the money to build it and uses the revenue generated by the building to pay off the loan,” Nunn said.

The last four campus housing complexes have been “mod” style, where residents share a living room and small bathrooms with a group of other students. The new dorm will reflect a more traditional setup.

“My understanding is that that name was chosen to kind of reflect the idea that we’re going to a renaissance or renewal of an older style of student housing,” Nunn said. “It’s going to have all the high tech amenities, but the big difference is that group bathroom, group shower component and that was not decided upon arbitrarily.”

The new dorm is geared towards freshmen and sophomores, who are most likely to live on campus. The building will have no specific restraint of a particular major or any other group of students.

The ultimate goal is to give CMU’s increasing student body more options.

“We are working hard to have a variety of types of student housing variety both in the layout, the amenities and also in the price so that you’ve got a range because different students can afford different things,” Nunn said. “The demand, we believe, is there for additional student housing particularly given the history of growth in student enrollment at CMU.”

A timeline has not been created for the construction of Renaissance Village, but the first building is estimated to be finished and open to students by fall of 2013.