The center of gravity of the school hasn’t shifted yet but the future of all student housing expansion is indeed south of Midway Plaisance. The University now owns almost the entire blocks between 60th and 61st Street from Stony Island all the way to Cottage Grove. I have a school map from 1985 and it certainly didn’t look that way back then.
I have to believe that the move south is strategic. The University will place all the academic buildings around the Main Quad but the only venue to put up big dorms for undergrads is south of Midway. Hence the construction of South and Woodlawn Residential Commons.
Keller Center (occupying the site of old Center of Continuing Education) just recently opened. Rubenstein Forum will be opened in 2020. And the University is proposing to demolish the Hyde Park Day School to build an 180 room hotel there (60th and Dorchester). By 2021, the foot traffic across Midway will likely double what we are seeing these days. Just imagine how busy it will be then when in a few more years the Obama Presidential Library opens.
The areas around the Woodlawn Residential Commons construction site are now blossoming with new townhouses, townhomes and upscale apartment buildings. Those areas (between 61st and 63rd along University, Ellis and Greenwood Avenues) were once upon a time urban slum but they have now for better or worse slowly been gentrified and absorbed by the university community.