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The 'Inn' thing at UT

Nearly 290 freshmen will call the Hyatt home for a while.

By ALEXANDRA ZAYASTimes Staff Writer
Published August 25, 2006

DOWNTOWN

There he was, tanning by the pool with a towel around his waist. Shaggy hair. Tan skin. Total hottie.

"You have to see this guy I've been eyeing," Kourtney Stark called to her dad from the 10th-floor window of her new college room at the Hyatt Regency Tampa. John Stark dropped the 18-year-old's bags of Target dorm accessories to investigate.

"He's got no body, man," John Stark teased.

He'd say that about any college guy she looked at, Kourtney said.

When Stark learned that his only daughter would be one of the 286 University of Tampa freshmen to move into the Hyatt on Tuesday and wait for on-campus dorms to become available throughout the year, he wasn't happy. He worried it would be too far of a commute to class every day.

So Kourtney's family drove from Wesley Chapel to check out the Hyatt on Tampa Street. Stark felt more comfortable when he could see the university clearly from the hotel. There is also a shuttle to the campus every 15 minutes.

"This is closer than my room was to my first class at Ohio State," he said as Kourtney laid out a black comforter and red pillows to spice up the beige room she'll share with another student.

The rooms don't look much different from other Hyatt rooms. They even have that hotel smell. Each has two beds, a TV, a bathroom and weekly maid service. Each floor has a laundry machine. Students can use the hotel's gym and pool.

"She's got the life of Paris Hilton, if you ask me," Marion Vitale said about the amenities as she waited with her 18-year-old daughter, Julie, in the long line to register downstairs.

The four co-ed floors at the 17-story hotel will be set up just like a dorm, with residence assistants and security personnel. Same brightly colored bulletin boards with announcements. Same rules.

"I've got to get headphones," Chris Finke, 18, said as he carried his guitar and amp into his room. When he looked around, he was pleasantly surprised. "I thought I was going to be in a little bed."

In the lobby, Amy and Bob Welch of Philadelphia weren't as optimistic about their daughter Maggie's move. The first-year nursing student has night classes, and they don't want her walking across the Kennedy bridge.

Bob Welch said Maggie was placed in the overflow housing because their $125 deposit check arrived later than other students'. Welch said he was never warned that would happen.

"People at the admissions office, boy, they should let you know," he said. Maggie had already accepted admission at UT, declining other schools. "We were certainly boxed in."

Freshmen have been housed in hotels for about 10 years, university spokesman Grant Donaldson said. The student population this year, more than 5,000, is the largest yet, and for the past decade, the freshman class has been larger than the classes before it. So hotel housing is inevitable.

"The parents don't necessarily like it, and the kids are not wild about it either, except for in about a week or two they love it," Donaldson said.

The goal is to shift students into on-campus residence halls as space becomes available, said Krystal Schofield, director of residence life at UT. Some may have to stay the entire academic year.

In the past, students stayed at the Ashley Plaza Hotel, which has Yahoo! travel guest reviews titled: "Skip this one at all costs!" and "Horror hotel."

"Although our floors had been remodeled at the Ashley Plaza, people were reading some comments on the Web," Schofield said. But "once they were in our floors, the kids didn't want to move out."

Schofield said the university switched to the Hyatt because it's closer to the school and has faster Internet connections.

Hotel or dorm, move-in is still just as emotional for parents, who will have to say goodbye today, before classes start on Monday. Carol Shepherd will travel back to New Hampshire without her son Max.

"He's just too far away from home," she said.

Alexandra Zayas can be reached at 226-3354 or azayas@sptimes.com

[Last modified August 24, 2006, 08:23:02]