By Jon Roe
First-year students will be accustomed to the sounds of drills and jackhammers by the end of their four-year degree.
Construction fences, signs and giant posters hanging off campus buildings constantly remind students and the university community that the University of Calgary is in the midst of a massive capital expansion project. Between now and fall 2010, six buildings are scheduled to be completed on or near the campus: the Taylor Family Digital Library, a high-density library, the Energy, Environment and Experiential Learning building, the Child Development Centre, the Dr. Fok Ying Tung International House and the Veterinary Medicine building.
These developments will dramatically change the face of the university, alter the programs and learning space available to students and address the need for more post-secondary seats in Alberta. The administration’s well-advertised plan is to add 7,000 seats to the U of C by 2010, but, as the projects stand now, only 1,000 of those seats will be ready by fall 2010. The majority of those seats–four to five thousand–are expected to come from the urban campus, a project that has yet to receive provincial funding.
“[The 7,000 new student spaces] was essentially a statement of the amount of demand we thought was out there,” said U of C provost Dr. Alan Harrison “Our ability to reach that is conditioned not just by whether the government gives us money for additional spaces, but also restricted by whether the government gives us money for the students themselves.”
The capital expansion plan is nakedly ambitious and now, excepting the urban campus, fully-funded by the provincial government and other sources. But the process hasn’t been without its hitches.
The Taylor Family Digital Library
Though ground was officially broken on the project Mar. 31, 2006, when it was called the Campus Calgary Digital Library, construction has yet to begin on the Taylor Family Digital Library, an ambitious $163 million project that, according to external relations, will house over 700,000 journals and books as well as hi-tech gadgets like 3D visualization rooms. The digital library will be placed next to the MacKimmie Library tower.
The TFDL, renamed after Don and Ruth Taylor donated $25 million to the project in Jan. of this year, will be a digitally based library complete with state-of-the-art technologies.
The project was to be completed by 2008, but it ran into problems while in the design phase and now won’t be finished until fall of 2010.
“The project ran into some difficulties in terms of design and associated budgetary issues, so it stalled for a while, frankly,” said Harrison. “But we are making progress now. When we talk about March of 2008, that’s not just a ceremonial shovel in the ground, that’s a literal shovel in the ground and the building will immediately begin to get built.”
Construction is expected to start in the spring of 2008. All of the funds associated with the building are in place with the exception of any inflationary adjustments, which will be covered by the provincial government, Harrison explained. The completion date is fixed and any delays could cause problems for the university.
“If it’s not ready by September of 2010, then it will be very difficult to move from one library to another in the middle of an academic year,” he said.
The architects and builders meet with university administration bi-weekly about the TFDL and are well aware of the importance to the university of having the library open on schedule, Harrison noted.
Contrary to previous announcements, no demolition will take place to build the digital library. Craigie Hall C, at one point to be removed to accommodate the new library, will be left alone, Harrison added.
The Taylor Family Quadrangle
The TFDL is only one piece of the university’s centre campus revitalization plan. A greenspace envisioned by administration as the centre of campus, the Taylor Family Quadrangle will be created and will be bordered by the TFDL, the MacEwan Student Centre, the Kinesiology complex and the University theatre.
The quadrangle as it stands will cut off access to MSC’s loading dock and costs for moving the dock are not currently included in the university’s $13 million budget for the project. The Students’ Union is currentl exploring how much the move would cost.
“There was a consultation done and they’re just getting the results now,” said SU president Julie Bogle. “Right now we don’t know what the price would be to move the loading docks.”
Harrison said he is aware of the issues with the loading dock but that discussions will be held with the SU at a later date.
“The architect working on the TFDL is subcontracting a landscape architect who will map out what the quad is going to look like,” said Harrison. “At that stage, we’ll have discussions [with the SU]. The loading dock is certainly an issue, we recognize it’s an issue. It will be more appropriate to have those discussions when we have a design we can both sit down and look at.”
High-density library
A $7.5 million high density library is also included in the TFDL’s $163 million budget. According to external relations, the high-density library will house a 60 per cent of the university’s library holdings in containers on shelves up to three stories in height and will be built on the southeast corner of campus, south of Scurfield Hall and bordering Campus Gate.
“Earlier on in the planning phases [the high-density library] was viewed as a secondphase [to the TFDL],” said Harrison. “Several of us took the view that it would make much more sense not to view it as a second phase, but rather to view it as an integral part of the overall library project.”
The HDL will border an existing parking lot and Harrison expects only a few rows of parking will be lost to the building.
Energy, Environment and Experiential learning building
Construction of the Energy, Environment and Experiential Learning building hasn’t been without its hitches, either. Earlier planned costs for the project were projected at over $300 million, but have since been scaled down.
“When we were in conceptional phase, before the building was actually funded, we were projecting a building that was much bigger than the one we now project,” said Harrison. “What’s happened is the government’s told us how much money they’re willing to give us and now we have to construct something that fits into that budget.”
The final cost of the project will be constrained by the $260 million the provincial government gave to the university and any additional inflation costs, which will be covered by the university.
“The $260 million, that’s how much money we’ve got and that’s how much money we’ll have because one of the things the government said to us this time, which they didn’t say to us before, was that’s the money you’ll have and you have to manage inflation,” said Harrison. “With previous projects they managed inflation for us.”
The budget includes the cost of development of new, and the renovation of existing, chemical and biology labs as well as the EEE building itself, which will accommodate 1,000 students. The building is to be completed, ideally, by fall of 2010, Harrison stated.
Urban Campus
After the 1,000 seats provided by the EEE building, the bulk of the rest of the 7,000 seats the U of C projected they could incorporate into the university by 2010, approximately 4,000 to 5,000 seats were to be put in the downtown urban campus, a 3.5-acre project in Calgary’s downtown east village. No provincial funding has been secured for the project–a partnership between the U of C, the University of Lethbridge, Athabasca University, Bow Valley College, the Calgary Board of Education, and the City of Calgary–estimated to cost $235 million and no designs have been finalized.
“What we’ve learned from other projects is, until we have a good sense of what our budget is, it isn’t possible to go very far down the road to think about very fine design details,” said Harrison. “Certainly there’s been a lot of planning and a lot of discussion but the urban campus is a very different project than the Taylor Family Library, EEE building, in the sense that we don’t have a budget because the government hasn’t funded it yet.”
Vice-president external relations Roman Cooney said the U of C has secured a 99-year lease from the City of Calgary for the site at a cost of $1, on the condition they also secure provincial funding.
Harrison has no idea when the provincial government will commit money to the urban campus project and no dates have been set for construction. But the university’s 7,000 student space number relies heavily on the 5,000 potential seats created downtown, and without any construction in the core, the university won’t meet that goal by 2010.
However, Harrison stressed that the 7,000 figure was more of an expectation of demand than a solid goal and the U of C is ultimately constrained by what funding the provincial government is willing to commit.
“The 7,000 new spaces is a notional target in conversations with the government around what we believe there’s demand for and in fact we really now are focusing more on what we need to build for the students we either already have or will be coming here over the next several years,” Harrison said.
Harrison also noted that, with the exception of the small amount of money they received towards their nursing and MD program earlier in the week, they have not received any money for the students themselves since 2006.
“If we don’t get any more money we will be in a situation where we won’t be admitting additional students,” said Harrison. “We’ve made it clear we admit as many students as we’re funded for. In one sense, of course, the absence of government funding will always restrict the amount of students we have. But understand we need both capital and operating dollars before we will consider the admission of additional students.”
The urban campus project appears to be on the back burner, but Harrison noted the university has many other projects on the go and he was encouraged by comments made by provincial education minister Doug Horner earlier this week in the Calgary Herald.
“We have an awful lot of work on the go right now, so it’s not like we’re sitting around twiddling our thumbs waiting for the government to respond to the urban campus,” said Harrison. “We’ve got plenty to worry about right now. We’re encouraged by the minister making explicit reference to the urban campus in his comments the other day.”
West Campus
Down the road, the university will develop the West Campus, 80 hectares of land the U of C received from the province in 1995. After two open houses involving the surrounding community at the end of May of this year, the university will bring out a revised plan later this fall.
“It’s largely conceptual at this point,” said Harrison. “We’re trying to sketch out what we can do and make sure that people feel that they have an opportunity for input.”
But the current West Campus plans don’t include a major residence building and beyond the Dr. Fok Ying Tung house, which will have beds for 80 students and is scheduled to be completed Jan. 2009, there are no new residence buildings announced by the U of C.
“We are lobbying the university, the provincial government and the municipal government about affordable housing,” said SU president Bogle. “One of the solutions is to build more on campus residences as we feel it enhances the student experience as provided by the portrait of the student done by the Office of the Student Experiences survey.”
Though it was too early to announce any plans, Harrison and university administration is aware of the need for a new building.
“We are in advanced stages of planning around additional residence space,” said Harrison. “We are expecting to be able to say a lot more about this in the next couple months. We are [as] cognisant as you of what’s happened recently in respective to the demand for residence spaces and we are working hard to come up with a plan to deal with it.”
In early Aug., almost 750 students were on the waiting list to get into U of C residence.
By the time this year’s round of frosh graduates, the university may look like an entirely different place. But, barring an urban campus funding announcement from the federal government, there won’t be 7,000 new spaces for 2010. Harrison admits growth is constrained by what the provincial government funds and that’s the way a responsible university should operate.
“Our stated intention has always been to only grow as quickly as government funding allows us to, which means we’re constrained to the speed of growth by both the provincial additional operating funds for new students and the provincial capital funds to provide the spaces for those new students,” said Harrison. “We would regard it–and I believe the students would regard it–as irresponsible to grow in the absence of funding because it will essentially devalue the quality of the education for everyone who is already here.”