Editor’s note: This is the last in a five-part series on the Department of Residence’s Master Plan. The plan, which spans across several years, will renovate and rebuild several of the ISU residence halls. The fifth area the Daily is profiling is the Towers Residence Association.

The predominately underclassman atmosphere of the Towers Residence Association is slated for change due to the Master Plan, but ISU students won’t have to worry about their dorms being torn down anytime in the near future.

“The long-term Master Plan was to take down two of the Towers and build some apartments or townhouses for upper-class students,” Director of Residence Randy Alexander said.

Alexander said he envisions the new Towers neighborhood as being similar to the upperclassman neighborhood planned for Hawthorn Court, while the Richardson Court and Union Drive associations will be primarily neighborhoods for younger students.

One option the Department of Residence is considering for the Towers plan is to keep two of the dorms standing.

Alexander said the remaining Towers could offer single-room options for older students. “All of this is student-driven,” he said. “If they don’t want it, there’s no point in wasting our time to develop it.”

TRA is the last area to be developed under the Master Plan.

“Anything to do at Towers is probably an absolute minimum of four years down the road,” Alexander said.

Even though the Towers renovations are still far in the future, they bother some current residents.

“Most students are OK with it. [However], there’s a vocal minority that don’t like it,” Wallace Hall Director Jon Wheeler said. “There’s a few who are loyal to their current buildings and are very visible in their support of the Towers.”

The changes could benefit the Towers community, Wheeler said. He said the current Towers residents typically have lower GPAs than other residence-hall students on campus.

“Some of the academic issues [of Towers] won’t be there because it will be an upperclassmen community,” he said.

As for now, Wheeler said there are fences around Storms and Knapp Halls, but it has nothing to do with the Master Plan.

“There were some areas that weren’t as stable as they would have liked, so that’s why they put up the fence,” Wheeler said.

The renovations on Towers are far enough away that Wheeler and the other hall directors don’t think about it often, he said.

“It is not a reality for us yet,” Wheeler said. “In another three or four years, it will be more of an issue for us.”

That issue is worrying some of Towers’ current residents, even though most will graduate by the time the Master Plan catches up with Towers. TRA Government of the Student Body senator Jonathon Weaver said he worries about the fate of his home.

“The best thing about Towers is its community atmosphere, which is directly contributed to its floor plan and the students and their classification,” said Weaver, junior in history.

Weaver said he wishes the Department of Residence would have invested more money into maintaining Towers. He also said he believes current Towers residents are unsure about what the Master Plan entails.

“I would like to see the residents of Towers to be more informed,” Weaver said.

April Otto, Towers resident and freshman in sports management, said she likes TRA the way it is now.

“It’s kind of like its own community,” Otto said.

Otto said by replacing the predominantly underclassmen Towers with upper-class housing, there will be bigger problems.

“Freshmen already have a hard enough time getting into housing the way it is,” Otto said.

However, Towers resident Maurice Scholten thinks the Towers renovations will be a positive change.

“They need to tear them down,” said Scholten, freshman in mechanical engineering.