Bridgeport (AP) — Video gaming walls, innovation stations, gyms with the latest equipment — dorm life isn't what it used to be.

At a time when skyrocketing college cost is a national concern and the number of traditional college age students is shrinking, universities across the country are creating luxurious student living spaces to entice new students and hold on to existing ones.

"It's expected," said George Estrada, vice president of facilities for the University of Bridgeport. "Students now expect a bit more."

The university is building its first new student residence hall in 40 years and students say they are thrilled.

By next fall, there will be 228 new beds on UB's 53-acre campus on Bridgeport's South End. Now the campus, which hugs Seaside Park and Long Island Sound, will include some apartment-style living units with kitchenettes, private bathrooms and bedrooms.

"It is a different style that we haven't seen before at this university," Khrystian Pereira, 26, a junior from Naugatuck, said. He regularly gives tours of the more traditional cinder block dormitories on campus and said he is excited to show the new four-story building to prospective students.

"It makes me want to stay another year," he added.

UB is not alone in pushing the residential housing envelope.

A new residence hall is also rising a few miles up Park Avenue at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield. It will have a suspension training fitness room and a video gaming room with a wall of small screens known as "micro-tiles." Both features are popular with the college-aged crowd, particularly the computer science majors who have chosen the school's video game track.

And at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, a huge new residence hall is being designed with Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (or STEM) freshmen and sophomores in mind. It will have "innovation zones" where students will be encouraged to explore ideas and build things with equipment like 3D printers.

Are students drawn to campuses that have such amenities?

"Of course," Pamela Schipani, UConn's executive director of residential life said. "This is not unlike other institutions."

Even UConn Stamford, long considered a commuter school that does not provide any housing, announced earlier this year that it plans to build dormitories adjacent to the school's Washington Boulevard campus. The university said it had started looking for a contractor for the job, but has not announced anything further.

While the cost of the construction is high, university officials at campuses throughout the state insist the building won't translate into higher tuition or room and board fees.

Fairfield University, for instance, just renamed its newest, four-year-old apartment style dorm after John C. Meditz, an alumni and a trustee, who made a $10 million gift to his alma mater to help offset the cost. University of Bridgeport's new dorm is projected to cost $21 million, but Estrada said the university plans to market the opportunity for someone to leave a family legacy and put their name on the building. In the meantime, he said, the university is taking advantage of favorable lending rates through the Connecticut Health and Education Facilities Authority or CHEFA.

"There have been few times where interest rates have been so attractive," Estrada said.

Had UB officials consulted with Rebecca Rieg, 20, a mass communications major from New Jersey before starting construction on its new 65,000 square foot residence hall, they would have learned her priority in campus living was just sufficient closet space.

"I have a ton of shoes, so the closets alone here sold me," Rieg said, recalling an overnight trip to another campus where the postage stamp size rooms and lack of storage space was a turn off.

After spending two years living in Seeley Hall on campus, however, Rieg moved off campus this year so she could have a kitchen. Center suites in the new residence hall will not not only have kitchenettes but living rooms, two bathrooms and four bedrooms each. Rooms off the wings will be more traditional. There will be Wi-Fi and air conditioning throughout.

Estrada is sure that there will have to be a lottery for spots in the new building given the tremendous interest. The new building is also expected to be the anchor to a plan to move all undergraduate housing to the west side of campus, forming a village with a secure inner courtyard.

The new beds will add to the on-campus population of 1,250, but are not expected to increase the overall enrollment of about 5,300. The same is true at Sacred Heart, where the new 216-bed village-style residence hall is primarily aimed at moving students out of the Trumbull Marriott and other off campus houses.

"Having upper leadership on campus goes a long way to increase student involvement," Larry Wielk, Sacred Heart's dean of students, said.

With the new dorm, Sacred Heart can keep its promise to provide every student four years of housing, Wielk said. And now with more choices.

"Every time we build, we try to have something distinctive about it," Wielk said. "Something that will set up apart on campus and hopefully from our competitors."

The new dorm's fitness center with the latest in extreme exercise equipment — TRX suspension training — won't be the kind you find in a hotel with mere treadmills and stationary bikes.

The video gaming room, meanwhile, will allow students to compete with each other and other students from across the country and will be used in conjunction with the major offered at Sacred Heart.

"I think is going to be big in terms of future recruitment," Wielk said. "There is no doubt in my mind when they walk into the hall there will be a wow factor."

One of the big things in UConn's Next Generation Connecticut Hall, — beyond its innovation room — will be its size and ability to house eight distinct learning/living communities where students can take a class in the building where they live, said Schipani.

"The biggest issues students have are privacy and comfort," she said. Most students, she added, are shocked to arrive on campus and find their dorms are not air conditioned. The NextGen Hall will be.

The suites will also have an abundance of double bedrooms as opposed to singles.

"Philosophically, we believe incoming students should have a roommate," she said. "It's part of the college experience, living with someone you are not related to."

Even with the addition of 727 new beds, Schipani at UConn said the on-campus population of 12,720 will only grow by about 200 because other living spaces will be phased out.

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Information from: Connecticut Post, http://www.connpost.com