Ode to Opus Hall: 20 years of apartment-style living

Hold up a second.

Pop quiz!

How many current Creighton residence halls can you name?

...

Do you know them all?

...

Or do you need more time to think?

...

Use your fingers to count, if you have to!

...

Click this link or scroll to the bottom of this Opus tribute to find the full list.

Now, on to Opus!

* * *

Opus was worth the wait

At 7 a.m. on a Wednesday in early February, students started to line up in the basement of Davis Square. It was 2006. And in a few months, Opus Hall would open.

If you were a junior or senior hoping to secure your spot in Opus, you were in that line.

Waiting.

And waiting.

The crowd grew as the morning unfolded. The line extended up a stairwell and into another hallway.

An excerpt from the Creightonian: “Residents did homework, played video games, watched DVDs on their laptops and slept.”

But the reward was significant. For just about 280 lucky students.

Opus Hall was the state-of-the-art, $20 million sanctuary opening just for upperclassmen. It offered high-tech phones (with personal numbers!), wireless Internet, cable TV and automated digital laundry facilities. It had a lounge with capacity for 80. And a courtyard with grills and picnic tables. Plus, some apartment-suites featured lofts.

It opened across the street from the Mike and Josie Harper Center on the east end of the Mall.

“This is the kind of housing students want, and it is what future students will expect,” said John Cernech, who was the vice president for Student Services in 2006.

(By the way,,, Davis Square? That was great place to live, as well. The residence hall opened in 2004 along 20th Street with the same red brick, Victorian-style architecture as Opus. It, too, had  two-, three- and four-bedroom apartments available for students. But in 2006, Opus was the NEW spot. It had an extra floor, and more hangout spaces. Its rooms were highly coveted).

Twenty years later, the Opus Hall waiting lists and room lottery still exists (though they can be managed virtually now).

Creighton has recently added two new residence halls for underclassmen to campus — so, Opus is no longer the “new” spot. But it’s a popular destination all the same.

Opus was made possible thanks to a generous gift from Mark Rauenhorst, BA’75, and Karen Dolan Rauenhorst, BSN’75.

Mark, a Board of Trustees Emeritus, was president and CEO of the Opus Corporation, a real estate development company and the namesake for the residence hall.

* * *

But… there were some growing pains

Some of the first residents of Opus had to deal with an unconventional and unplanned alarm clock. At approximately, 7 a.m. each weekday.

The incessant beeping of construction trucks in reverse. The pounding pulses of a jackhammer. The cringe-worthy sawing of metal.

Just after Opus opened, a rather massive construction project began in the street sewers.

It was city-initiated and federally mandated. So, Creighton had no say in the matter.

But wow, was it an inconvenience to the students who had just moved in.

(There was also more construction across the street. D.J. Sokol Arena would open in 2009.)

Here’s what Meredith Bookstaver told the Creightonian in January 2009:

“I’m not on the side of the building that is directly in front of the construction, but my room still shakes. When in in my friend’s room, things actually fall off the walls sometimes from the construction.”

To add to the frustration, on the days when it rained heavily (and the sewer backed up), the smell was apparently quite pungent. Also, the Opus’ grass quad would get extra soggy.

Oh, one other point of contention in the early years: Temperature control.

In 2007, the University enacted a new energy policy which restricted thermostats from being set above 70 degrees. So, in the winter, for some, it got chilly.

But eventually, the kinks got worked out and Opus became a top choice for on-campus living.

* * *

Note: Do you have any Opus Hall memories you'd like to share? Send an email to Jon Nyatawa at jonnyatawa@creighton.edu and you may be featured in a future alumni article.

In case you missed it: Read our tributes to a couple now-demolished residence halls, Gallagher Hall and Kiewit Hall.