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GREENSBORO — UNCG’s trustees said Thursday they aren’t ready to decide the fate of some of the school’s oldest dormitories.

The board asked Chancellor Linda Brady and her staff to do more work on options for the dorms before presenting a recommendation to the board.

Board member Randall Kaplan said the issue goes beyond the fate of the dorms to where the campus is going.

“What is it we would ideally want to make this a campus of first choice?” Kaplan said. “As we make these decisions, what does it drive us into?”

The seven buildings, which make up the campus’ historic Quad area, are so old and in such disrepair that the school faces a tough choice: demolish and replace them with new, modern buildings or gut and renovate them, preserving their shells.

Preservationists — including many students and alumni — want the buildings renovated. Many students living on campus say they’d prefer to do away with the Quad buildings, which have bad wiring and plumbing and are without air conditioning, fire sprinklers and handicapped access.

Either option will cost in the neighborhood of $100 million , school officials estimate.

The school plans to add 1,200 on-campus students by 2017, the first 400 by 2011 . Brady told the board that to meet that goal, the school would have to begin working toward renovation or rebuilding as soon as possible.

She said last week that she hoped to have a decision on the Quad by May 1. But she and other board members now say the issue is too complicated to decide that quickly.

The chancellor has had a series of open forums on the issue during which she has heard from students, faculty, staff members and alumni. She said she has been surprised by the uniformity of on-campus student sentiment for new construction.

Michael Tuso , president of the school’s Student Government Association, told the board that he has heard the same while talking to students and through surveys taken by the SGA and Residence Hall Association.

“The SGA and the Residence Hall Association are on the same page, which doesn’t always happen,” Tuso said. “But the students have been overwhelmingly in favor of rebuilding.”

On Thursday, the board saw a presentation on options for the Quad that is now available on the school’s Web site.

Some board members had the same criticism that preservationists expressed a week ago: Plans for rebuilding seem fleshed out in drawings and diagrams, but the options for renovation seem much less detailed.

The board asked Brady and her staff to do more work on both plans, presenting as many options as possible.

They also wanted to revisit the campus’s master plan for future development, approved in 2007 , to see how renovating the dorms or building new ones might fit in.

Trustees agreed to meet again as soon as a recommendation could be made, even if that comes before their next scheduled meeting in September.

Board chairman Stephen Hassenfelt said he wanted to be sure the board makes the best decision not just for the Quad, but also for the future growth of the university.

“We need to put this in the context of what it’s going to accomplish on campus, not just bricks and mortar,” Hassenfelt said.

Brady said she is committed to exploring all options.

“This is indeed the largest project ever undertaken on this campus in terms of cost and scope,” she said.

“We’re really trying to focus on where we want to be as a campus.”

Contact Joe Killian at 373-7023 or joe.killian@news-record.com