SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC NEWS) — Syracuse University announced plans last Wednesday to convert the Sheraton into a residence hall. While the hotel is set to become a 400-room dorm next fall, SU sophomores Nico Horning and Max Gifford have lived in the hotel this semester. The two clearly agree on one benefit of their living situation. “I didn’t want to take a bus everyday,” Horning said in reference to living at Sheraton over Syracuse’s South Campus. “That would’ve made my life a living hell,” Gifford added.
If living on South Campus would’ve been that negative, then Horning and Gifford’s heaven is this hotel. But as SU’s need for student housing grows, the option to live in the Sheraton, has an obvious advantage. “Leave here at 10:55 for an 11:00 class that I have right across the street,” Horning explained. “It’s much easier to figure that out and get work done then carving out the time and waiting for the bus. I have a friend that told me he was waiting for a bus for 35 minutes the other day.”
Horning had to wait until July to find out where he’d live in the fall. That’s when the sophomore got off a waitlist for the Sheraton he was on for three months. While a hotel’s different from typical on-campus housing, there’s something consistent with traditional housing. “Same sound, same music that you would hear in any other dorm,” Gifford made clear.
The Sheraton won’t become a dorm until next fall but students have lived in it for years. Going all the way back to 2011, and travel all the way up to the fourth floor. Syracuse University has put students in the hotel full time ever since. Regardless, it’s still a bit weird living from on campus housing to hotel housing. “Having my own kitchen would be cool and all that but to me it’s easier to go to a dining hall, come back to my dorm,” Horning went on to say. “Know I have space and not be distracted by what’s going on.”
The California native then mentioned how the distraction of the Sharaton’s eventual transformation shouldn’t cover the fact that this news brings both a positive and a negative. “This whole nine floors of the sheraton will be taken by students and I think that’s really important to limit the housing shortage that is here on campus right now,” Horning said. “The downside of that, there goes another hotel. Getting rid of it right next to campus, now you’re down another hotel and you have to go downtown or elsewhere to stay somewhere.”
