With its 140 beds closed down in 1996 because of plumbing and electrical problems — and because UH didn't need the dorm space at the time, according to officials — it still sits virtually unused except for a few office spaces.

The housing shortage has renewed attention on Frear. While its future is still uncertain, the Board of Regents has authorized UH capital improvement project director Jan Yokota to look at potential public/private partnerships to rebuild or refurbish Frear as part of updating the three oldest dorms on Dole Street — Frear, Johnson and Gateway.

But that could be two years away.

Under a public/private partnership arrangement, a private developer would pay for and manage the building, relieving the state or university of the need to find the money.

The dorm crisis eased by 100 more rooms last week, as another student payment deadline passed. According to Rodney Sakaguchi, Manoa's vice chancellor for operations, the housing office is now trying to work out modest agreements with half a dozen hotels for blocks of rooms they'll rent to students, perhaps with a resident assistant in place at each to provide a more dorm-like atmosphere.

But Sakaguchi says he's "not confident anything will materialize at this late date."

As a result, those still without a room are scrambling to find affordable apartments in nearby neighborhoods.

Housing director Margit Watts has told parents she'll be sending out around 500 letters to late applicants for dorm space letting them know "it's next to impossible to give them a room." As well, letters are going out to those at the bottom of the "on time" list to let them know where they are.

As the situation unfolded, parents were so concerned about where their young people were going to live that one family was even volunteering to help make emergency fixes at Frear.

"My husband said he'd paint," said pediatrician Theresa Wee, one of a group of concerned UH parents who are members of a "Friends of 'M' (Manoa) Town" parent association.

Painting is the least of Frear's problems. Word on campus says it's haunted, and indeed it was used as a haunted house at Halloween last year, according to student housing staff, and some walls were painted black to create the proper illusion.

But the boarded-up windows, rooms littered with old desks, lamps, mattresses and some broken glass might give anyone jitters on a dark night along Dole Street's dormitory row.

When Frear Hall was closed down, sewage was backing up and the electrical system was faulty. Just plugging in a hairdryer in one bedroom was enough to blow out the electricity in the room next door, said Ku'ulei Pau, residential life coordinator with the UH Housing office.

"At the time, the housing market was very different, and we had a lot of vacancies," said associate housing director Jan Camara. "Rather than (having vacancies in every dorm), we consolidated and went between closing Johnson Hall and (closing) Frear. Eventually it was just Frear that remained closed."

"The infrastructure was the oldest," said Camara. "As computers came in, it couldn't handle that. And the water pressure was poor." Eventually, she said, the building "was converted to office space and used for storage."

It's still a giant store room. The student lounge alone is clogged with lamps and garbage bags filled with linens, and stacks of desks. A piano is almost hidden under a mountain of black trash bags containing blankets and sheets. One of the rooms sprouted a tree, said Pau, because of water seepage and leaks. The only portion being used is one area where Speech Pathology has offices.

"Once we shut it down," said Pau, "we didn't do any work."

Walter Ishikawa, building maintenance supervisor for Gateway, Johnson and Frear halls, has been cannibalizing Frear for spare corkboards and mirrors to use as part of Gateway's summer refurbishing to get it ready for the start of fall classes Aug. 23.

But Ishikawa admires Frear's lines and the beauty of its grassy inner courtyard, which still is in good shape. And he estimates that if the structure was gutted, it would cost maybe $3 million to fix the sewage and water problems, put in new walls and electrical, and get it up and running.

"Leave the shell and redo it," suggested Ishikawa, who has become adept at such things as scavenging for the hardware to repair 40-year-old louvers just to make the windows at Gateway work.

At some level, Frear also has been a victim of unrealized hopes. Two years ago the Legislature authorized a $30 million bond issue to tear it down and rebuild, but housing director Watts says that's not enough to build what campus leaders hoped for — an honors college along with a dorm.

"That amount of money will not build a facility to build enough beds to give us enough revenue," Watts said. "The plans don't account for enough beds to pay the bond debt. We need to reconfigure it."

CIP director Yokota said those plans included a total rebuild of Frear Hall to include an honors college, auditorium and other components.

"Part of what we will be doing (now) is looking at the possibility of renovating it and what it would cost," said Yokota. "I don't believe that the renovation possibility has been costed out."