USF Sarasota-Manatee Campus Will Break Ground March 1 for First-Ever Student Housing

February 24, 2023 – Sarasota

The University of South Florida, on Wednesday, March 1, will host a ceremonial groundbreaking for the Sarasota-Manatee campus’s first-ever student center and residential housing complex. The event will be a major milestone in USF’s ongoing transformation of the campus that exemplifies the university’s steadfast, and strengthening, commitment to Sarasota-Manatee campus students, faculty and staff and the region.

The groundbreaking will take place at 2 p.m. on the Sarasota-Manatee campus, 8350 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. 

(To download renderings of the building, click here.)

USF President Rhea Law and Sarasota-Manatee campus Regional Chancellor Karen Holbrook have invited USF students, faculty, staff, supporters, community leaders and other dignitaries to campus for the groundbreaking. 

When the building is completed in time for the fall 2024 semester, as many as 200 students will be able to live on the Sarasota-Manatee campus for the first time. USF expects the six-story, 100,000-square-foot complexwill help the university recruit and retain students, including from out of state and overseas; elevate the on-campus experience for all students; and allow the Sarasota-Manatee campus — the only four-year research university in the region — to forever shed the moniker of being a “commuter college.”

Highlights of the approximately $42 million building that was approved last year by the Florida Board of Governors and the USF Board Trustees: 

• It is being constructed along Seagate Drive, on the south side of the Sarasota-Manatee campus, just west of the existing Selby Auditorium and Crosley Campus Center. 

• The bottom two floors will include a ballroom, dining facilities, a bookstore, lounges and offices and meeting space for USF World, student government and other organizations. 
• Architectural features in the student center portion will include large windows allowing students and visitors to look out toward Sarasota Bay and Longboat Key. 
• The top four floors will include residences in various configurations. 

The student center and residential housing complex represents half of plans that promise to more than double the size of the Sarasota-Manatee campus. 

With construction of a $62 million, 75,000-square-foot Nursing/STEM building, USF will, in coming years, expand its academic offerings in nursing, engineering, the health sciences, the arts and other fields on the campus. 

For more information about expansion plans for the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee campus, click here.