WILLIAMSBURG — About 500 William & Mary students who started the school year in a hotel will soon be able to move into their new dorm.
The group is among the 900 students who began the year staying at several other locations, including the Williamsburg Woodland Hotel & Suites, due to construction delays of the university’s new dorms. Only two of five new dorms were ready when students started back in August.
Students assigned to Pine Hall, one of the delayed dorms, will begin moving in between Sept. 30 and Oct. 3, William & Mary’s Board of Visitors was told Friday. The remaining 400 students are expected to move into Cedar and Oak halls by mid-October, a university spokeswoman said. The five dorms are part of the West Woods Quad project announced in 2023.
William & Mary’s Board of Visitors heard a student move-in update and approved the university’s campus comprehensive plan on Friday. James W. Robinson/The Virginia Gazette
Board members on Friday also approved the university’s campus comprehensive plan, which provides a 100-year framework to guide the campus’ development. The plan aims to enhance campus sites, such as making road safety improvements to the Ukrop Way and Jamestown Road intersection and adding both new classroom buildings and expanded underground parking for Boswell and Jones halls. Another focal point will be improving accessibility for the Sunken Garden.
The comprehensive plan provides guidance for developing and improving the Williamsburg and Gloucester Point campuses over the next 100 years. It also has three companion plans that focus on learning spaces, landscape, and phasing and implementation.
The plan was developed through in-person and virtual feedback from across the W&M community, including from surveys sent to students, faculty, staff and alumni.
For more information on the campus comprehensive plan, visit wm.edu/sites/campusplan.
In other William & Mary news, earlier this week the university announced a donation from W&M alumnus and LS Power COO Darpan Kapadia, who spoke at convocation. The gift, from Kapadia and his wife, Erica Olan, was called the “first-of-its-kind gift to William & Mary directly supporting enrollment.”
“This investment in future students is a game-changer,” W&M President Katherine Rowe said of the gift. “It enables us to spread the word nationwide that William & Mary is the place to come and grow as a discerning leader.”
The gift is intended to strengthen recruitment of out-of-state students, provide scholarship funds and support internships and applied learning experiences. The amount was not disclosed at the request of the donor, the university said.
James W. Robinson, 757-799-0621, james.robinson@virginiamedia.com
https://www.pilotonline.com/2025/09/26/one-of-three-delayed-new-wm-dorms-expected-to-open-next-week/
