BOSTON (WHDH) - Local college students might need to start feeling at home in hotels as schools like Northeastern University look for ways to minimize the number of students living on campus.
The university is hoping to lease floors in the nearby Westin Hotel, also in the Midtown Hotel in the Back Bay.
“We are talking to the Westin hotel and the midtown hotel about acquiring beds as we get a more precise number of students. But, it’s probably about a thousand students or more,” said Kathy Spiegelman Vice President and Chief of Campus Planning and Development at Northeastern.
University officials said that they will need extra space when students return in order to provide safe social distancing during the pandemic.
“In our residences, we are eliminating triples, we are eliminating quads we’re having single and doubles only,” Spiegelman said.
School officials explained their plans in a Boston City council hearing Thursday.
They assured councilors the students in the hotels would be closely monitored by staff out of concern not only for them but, for the hotel workers as well.
In terms of reducing risk, the student population in these hotels will be the most monitored population with viral testing,” Provost David Luzzi said. “because we have put together this very robust program for testing in terms of virus.”
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said he saw this as a win-win situation for the university and the hotels.
“It allows the colleges to come back and have safe social physical distancing in the dorms it allows the hotels to earn some revenue,” he said. “I think that right now the hotel industry in Boston is hurting. Quite honestly they haven’t had guests in four months.”
Other colleges and universities in Boston are also planning to move some students to hotels and noncampus apartment buildings.
City officials said they will start accepting applications from those schools on Monday.
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