I really think they could resue it for students housing. MSU has made a mistake with getting rid ot on-campus housing which has resulted in some pretty ridiciulous housing sprawl; they can correct this with all of this excess land they have.
I think a big part of that problem is that students don't want to live on campus, I wouldn't either. Even if they were to expand student housing, I'd personally rather see it go somewhere more central, or even where university village was. That being said, I don't think MSU will be expanding their on campus housing anytime soon, they already claim the largest residence hall system in the country.
With the redevelopment around Trowbridge, it doesn't make sense not to add more housing within walking distance. Spartan and Red Cedar Villages, as well as Cherry Lane and Faculty Bricks were all within walking or biking distance. They messed up. This wasn't even the middle of nowhere before the redevelopment. You take off hundreds of housing units on campus, and you get hundreds of units way-the-hell-up in Bath and DeWitt townships. Actions have consequences and this was no mistake; this was the cause of some of the worst housing sprawl in the metro, last decade. This is bad planning by the city and university no matter which way you cut it.
This packet has more info and plenty of renderings/elevations of this project (edit:I noticed a previous construction junction Jared referenced had a couple other renderings I added below also): Spartan Village redevelopment packet (pdf)
Did the plans change, or did I understand the layout wrong? I was under the impression that some the line of buildings along the south perimeter were three or four stories.
There's not any elevations of those buildings in the packet as far as I can tell, but in that aerial view they look about 3-4 floors to me. They definitely look at least as tall as the existing University Village buildings, which are three floors.
They have now updated the project name. It's officially called 1855 Place. I'm looking forward to this being completed. I previously read that they would be moving Residential and Hospitality Services here, but I didn't know that they would be moving Intercollegiate Athletics there from Jenison. That should be an upgrade for them.
Construction on the parking garage here has gone above ground, they've managed to get almost half of the vertical columns up within a day. Overall things with this project seem to be moving quickly, I expect there will be more buildings going vertical fairly soon.
Construction on at least one of the family apartment buildings is up to the second floor while the parking ramp continues to come together, check out two webcams at the bottom of MSU's 1855 Place project page: 1855 Place - MSU-IPF
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