BOSTON-Northeastern University plans to build two 22-story dormitory towers and an administration and retail building on its Boston campus. The administration hopes to ease the housing shortage for nearly 2,000 NU students.

University officials will file plans next week with the Boston Redevelopment Authority outlining the schools plans for the multi-million dollar project but it may take months of public hearings before the plan gets the city's approval, a board spokeswoman said. "Everybody feels a sense of urgency to get this done," the spokesman tells GlobeSt.com. The goal is to have the two dormitory towers at Ruggles and Tremont Streets built and open by September 2009. That dorm would be capable of housing 1,200 students and also contain space for retailers and administrative offices, he says.

Northeastern also plans to tear down Cullinane Hall at 288 Huntington Ave., the current home to the school's College of Computer Science, and replace it with a 600-bed dormitory by 2011, he says. The school also will seek approval to eventually build another dormitory on the site of a Northeastern-owned parking lot on Gainsborough Street across from Matthews Arena.

The dorm towers at Ruggles and Tremont streets will border the city's Roxbury neighborhood and be located adjacent to a public housing complex and across the street from the Boston Police Department's headquarters. The proposal comes nearly two years after Northeastern created a stir among neighborhood residents after it announced it would construct a dormitory tower near a Fenway condominium complex. McGrail says the cost of the project has not yet been set.