California State University, Hayward, is inching closer to building new student housing designed to attract students fresh out of high school.

The California State University Board of Trustees this week included the estimated $28 million Pioneer Heights expansion in its list of construction projects for the 2003-04 school year.

The proposal calls for three student housing buildings with 76 apartments, a maintenance building and a student center containing meeting, exercise, computer laboratory and administrative offices. The five buildings will be built on 3.3 acres between Pioneer Heights and Harder Road.

State money does not pay for dormitories. The system's board instead will issue bonds that students who rent the apartments eventually will pay off.

The Cal State Hayward proposal remains in the beginning stages and will return to the board in September for approval. Right now, the designs are in the works, and the university is seeking public comments until mid-August. A review prepared by the university determined that the project is environmentally safe.

Doug Sprague, president of the Old Highland Homeowners Association and professor emeritus at Cal State Hayward, said the association had received neither the environmental-impact report nor the announcement of a public review.

"We would be interested in studying the issue and seeing what kind of impact it would have on the neighborhood," he said.

Bruce Barrett, past president of the homeowners association, which includes various streets above the university, also said he would need to see the plans to comment on them.

More than a year ago, when tentative plans for student and faculty housing were presented to neighbors, residents were not as concerned about expanding Pioneer Heights because it is in a valley, Barrett said.

The proposed three- to four-story complexes would double the number of students living on campus, adding 416 bed spaces to the 406 ones that exist. The proposed apartments include 32 units of shared bedrooms for freshmen and 44 single-occupancy bedrooms for upperclassmen.

The housing should be open by fall 2005, said Dick Metz, vice president of Cal State Hayward's administration and business affairs.

Jami Goldman, who just graduated from Cal State Hayward and lived at Pioneer Heights for two years, supports the new complex.

"There will be more of a campus life" said Goldman, who was involved in student government and soccer. "The more students are on campus, the more students will stay on campus."

New university apartments were proposed a decade ago. The project was ready for construction to begin but stalled after construction costs were higher than anticipated, Metz said.

Other factors, including the economic downturn, slumping enrollment and a different housing supply, also contributed to the project's postponement, acc-ording to university documents.

More than 600 students wish to move on campus, which offers market or below-market rentals, Metz said.

"It's certainly much more convenient," he said.

The university's director of housing and residential life, Regina Metoyer, said the demand for campus living has increased in the past two or three years. Each September, a waiting list forms, but it usually is gone by the time winter quarter begins.

Part of the university's enrollment goals -- to increase the number of students, especially people entering college for the first time -- calls for more campus housing.

The housing seems to target young freshmen, who accounted for only 148 of the nearly 13,000 students enrolled at Cal State Hayward during spring 2003.

For the past several years, the university, known as a commuter school with mostly transfer students, has set out to court this population. Statistics show its numbers have been fairly stag-nant during the past eight years.

The new housing, Metz said, will help create a more vibrant, traditional college atmosphere.

"We hope to begin to draw more first-time freshmen," he said.