SAN DIEGO — As UC San Diego tries to meet the demand for student housing on campus, a major construction project slated to open this fall has now been pushed back.

The Theater District Living and Learning Neighborhood was expected to open at the start of fall quarter with enough beds for 2,000 students, classrooms, offices, food and shopping options.

UCSD says the $520 million dollar project is delayed due to supply chain issues and above average rainfall throughout the winter. The university also notes in a statement to FOX 5 “One innovative approach the university takes advantage of to reduce construction impacts is prefabricating interior and exterior wall panels. The primary driver of the delay is a delay in receiving these prefabricated materials.”

Only about 350 students will be able to move into in September, available in one of the project’s five buildings.

“Due to the construction delay, I think there will be a small added amount of triples [to a room] but overall, a lot of our spaces are singles and doubles,” said Sky Yang, president of Associated Students UCSD.

The university has experienced large growth in enrollment through the years. Today it serves about 40,000 students, with the total number of beds available sitting around 18,000.

A spokesperson for UCSD said, “UC San Diego’s housing guarantee is still in place. The incoming undergraduate class for the Fall of 2023 will be eligible for a two-year on-campus housing guarantee.”

“After that, you can be on the housing waitlist; there’s a possibility that you would get housing on campus, but a lot of times students will have to live off campus. As we know we’re in La Jolla and it’s a very expensive place,” said Yang.

UCSD is now anticipating the remaining four buildings and about 1,600 beds will be available by the winter quarter. Including this project, UC San Diego plans to add 5,700 new undergraduate beds on campus by 2025.