Student Dormitory: Institutional or Residential?

Good question - my impression from reading up on past discussions on this forum is that you can argue it either way. I'm partly commenting just to follow the thread, as we do a lot of student housing work and the v4 requirement for this credit is a sticking point, especially when a project is meeting its campus's high bike parking standards and still not ending up anywhere near the 30% or 1 per DU number. Just considering how much less square footage per person a dorm has versus an apartment building, the residential requirement seems disproportionately high in that context.

My big concern with the Case 1 approach is that the bike storage standard of 5% of regular occupants would not meet the needs of long-term residents, so putting the project in the same category as a hotel or other short-term lodging wouldn't make sense. Going for Case 1 would also obligate the project to provide additional shower access to any FTE. In Case 2, the 30% bike storage requirement is high, but I think it would be reasonable to do some alternative calculation of the "1 per dwelling unit" requirement. These projects tend to have some logical grouping of rooms/facilities, so it seems reasonable to define a dwelling unit as, say, 6 units that share a restroom and lounge rather than as an individual unit. Or, if the university has bike parking standards, you might refer to how those treat dorms. I'll defer to anyone who's gotten a ruling from USGBC on this one, but I think that's a good start to demonstrate you're meeting the credit intent even if you're not strictly meeting the Case 2 standard.

Was there a resolution to this question?