Should Brown build dormitories in the Jewelry District?

By PBN Staff

Brown University has proposed adding 300 to 400 new beds to its supply of dormitories, with the stated purpose being to bring more upperclassmen back on campus (as it is, 80 percent of seniors live off-campus).

One of the challenges facing the school, however, is the difficulty of shoehorning any more dormitories into the dense College Hill neighborhood. Instead, Brown is thinking of building the new dorms in the Jewelry District, where it has been accumulating land for years, and where it is moving the Warren Alpert Medical School, hopefully by August 2011.

Should Brown be allowed to build dorms in the Jewelry District, or will that get in the way of the city and state creating a thriving center for biotechnology research and companies?