Five buildings on Woudestein to close this year already, due to budget cuts

Five buildings on the Woudestein campus will close earlier than planned, due to budget cuts. This will save the university approximately 5 million euros. Buildings F, G, Q, N and V were already earmarked for demolition but will now close before 1 January.

The V building, which was originally intended to be temporary, will close first in August. The building primarily contains lecture rooms, which are not needed to fill the class schedules.

The other four buildings will close at the end of the calendar year. Students reside in building F, while building G has study spaces, teaching rooms, and several organisations. Q and N are home to the incubator Erasmus Enterprise.

Accommodation

All organisations and staff will have to find accommodation elsewhere. This applies, among others, to the economics faculty association EFR, Erasmus Magazine, and Erasmus Enterprise. Plans for this are still in development. The Rotterdam School of Management is expected to free up a floor in the Mandeville building to house more staff. There will be no direct replacement for the student accommodation in F, as the residents’ contracts were set to end anyway on 31 December 2025.

Many study spaces will disappear with the closure of building G. The number of study spaces per student will remain slightly above the university’s standard if the number of students declines as expected, however. If the number of students remains stable or increases, as it has this academic year, there will be a shortage of around sixty study spaces until the Tinbergen building officially opens in 2027. The building service RE&F is still seeking a solution for this shortage.

Paintballing

Due to the earlier demolition works, the university will initially incur slightly more costs than planned in 2025 and 2026, but thereafter, the early closure will result in significant savings, amounting to 2.6 million euros in 2027 alone. In total, this will mean a saving of approximately 5 million euros.

The University Council has asked in a letter to the Executive Board whether students can organise activities in the buildings once they are permanently closed. The members are considering activities like laser tag or paintball. A study association is said to have already volunteered to organise this. Executive Board member Ellen van Schoten was not yet aware of the idea. “We’ll have to look at that at the time”, she told EM. The council must also formally approve the demolition plan.