Beginning in fall 2006, the city will no longer permit GW to house hundreds of freshmen in the Hall on Virginia Avenue, but as of yet, the University has not finalized its plans for the future of building.

Sherry Rutherford, GW managing director for real estate, planning and development, said potential uses for HOVA include renovating the hotel-like rooms into small efficiency apartments to accommodate graduate students or faculty; demolishing and rebuilding HOVA; or even keeping it vacant until the University can decide how to use it.

According to the campus plan, an agreement between the University and the surrounding community, 70 percent of the University’s first 8,000 undergraduates must be housed on campus. All students exceeding that number must have a bed on campus, and all freshmen and sophomores must be housed within strict campus boundaries by next fall.

“Though we may consider The Aston (and HOVA) as on-campus housing because it’s GW housing, the community doesn’t see it (that way) because it’s not within very specific boundaries,” said Michael Akin, GW’s director of D.C. and Foggy Bottom/West End affairs.

As part of the University’s campus land use assessment project, and due to complaints from the community, GW is looking at its properties outside of the official campus boundaries, including The Aston and City Hall, in addition to HOVA. While The Aston will most likely remain an upperclassman dorm next fall, so long as the University meets its 70 percent quota, HOVA’s purpose will have to change within the year. GW’s options for City Hall are limited because it leases the property from another owner.

Although the fate of HOVA is still uncertain, several possible uses are being considered by a special task force established this past summer. Akin said “anything is on the table.”

The existing campus housing has approximately 67 percent of undergraduates on campus, with 453 freshmen living in HOVA and a handful of sophomores living in The Aston.

Rutherford said that since HOVA is zoned by the city as residential space, using the building for classroom space or even a hotel again would require a zoning change, which is highly unlikely.

The lack of freshman housing due to HOVA’s restriction could be remedied by the new F Street dorm, which will open in August 2006 with 379 beds. Additional rooms are also being added into other dorms, and it is likely that GW will eventually build more residence halls, including one on the Mount Vernon Campus.

“We don’t have a big campus. We are very consolidated. We are self-contained,” Akin said. “When we have to grow, we have to grow in a constrained manner.”

These new development projects are part of a greater development effort across campus, which includes working on plans to put retail, commercial and non-student residential properties on Square 54, the site of the old GW Hospital.

While using the old hospital site to build more campus housing would solve GW’s housing dilemma, the University has decided not to use the on-campus space to build replacement residence halls. Instead, GW is hoping to use the property to help gain revenue, particularly because of its close proximity to the Foggy Bottom Metro station.

“It’s not that we’re not seeking to accommodate beds on campus,” Rutherford said. “(Square 54) is just ideally located for a mixed-use, transit development project.”

Watergate aficionados are concerned that HOVA room 723, which served as a surveillance post for the Watergate robbers in the 1970s, will be destroyed during renovation.

“You don’t mess with history,” said freshman Steve Lieberman, president of the HOVA Watergate Living and Learning Community. “You’re supposed to leave places with historical implications largely the way they are for future generations, otherwise you are doing posterity a disservice.”

Tracy Schario, GW director of media relations, made assurances that the University will take into consideration the historical significance of the building before making any concrete decisions.

“I can’t tell you how many reporters I’ve taken into that room to take a picture of Watergate,” she said. “The integrity of the room will be maintained.”

The task force devising a plan for HOVA and The Aston is expected to reach a final decision later this fall.