Wil Andruschak

Students’ Union president Dalmy Baez says the downtown campus sounds exciting, but the university still has upgrades to do on its existing campus

The University of Calgary wants to build a new campus in the East Village and give 4,000 students some hands-on experience working with the area’s homeless population. However, the province hasn’t provided the much-needed cash to get the project going.

“We’re moving ahead with more detailed planning,” says university spokesperson Colleen Turner. “[The East Village] is an area of Calgary the U of C sees potential in.”

The new campus would be built on land just east of city hall, which currently houses a pair of parking lots. When completed, the site would accommodate 2,000 students from the U of C in addition to 2,000 more from the Alberta College of Art and Design, the University of Lethbridge and a handful of other institutions. The U of C wants to build a low-rise building with 600,000 square feet of space. The school is also looking to rent 90,000 square feet in The Bow, the new office tower being built by EnCana Corporation.

The development is partly meant to allow more students into the school, and partly to get students in social work, medicine and nursing in touch with low-income Calgarians who frequent the area’s shelters. “This is giving [students] an opportunity to work with Salvation Army folks and YWCA folks,” says Turner.

At the Salvation Army’s Centre of Hope, a 600-person homeless shelter two blocks from the proposed campus, social work students have already done practicums as case workers for the agency’s clients. The Salvation Army hopes for more of the same, including a clinic staffed by U of C med students.

“We think [the campus] is an awesome way of bringing something vibrant to the East Village,” says John Rook, CEO of the Salvation Army’s community services. “We’re very excited about the possibility of having a university here.”

He points out that having more colleges in the area could also help homeless people who need job training to get off the streets. The U of C Students’ Union (SU) is also backing the project — provided it doesn’t divert resources from the main campus.

“It sounds like a pretty exciting project,” says SU president Dalmy Baez. “We certainly encourage the university to develop innovative ways to educate students.”

She cautions, however, that the U of C still has upgrades to do on the main campus, such as removing asbestos. “We feel the university has a lot on its plate and the [new campus’s] plans are a little vague,” she says. “A plan needs to be put in place and it needs to be communicated to students.”

The idea of the campus has been in the works since 2004, but hasn’t yet left the drawing board. Although the university is hoping to have detailed plans next year, the province hasn’t promised any funding. The government is warning that it won’t pony up unless the university adds more spaces to train people in occupations the province needs, such as engineers, scientists and the skilled trades.

“We won’t move forward with funding until a proposal is given to the minister,” says Rachel Buska, spokesperson for Alberta Advanced Education. “It’s not about one institution or another, it’s about all of… Alberta.”

For its part, the city is backing the project, and donated a $25-million piece of land to the university.

“The sooner they can do it, the better,” says Chris Ollenberger, the city official charged with overseeing the redevelopment of the East Village. “Ideally, we’d like to see some good progress out of the university and the province in the next year or two.”