uOttawa Brooks Residence | Decommissioned
 

uOttawa's Campus Master Plan has had this residence on the hit list. With the opening of the new residence The Annex at Laurier and Friel, Brooks has been sacked. No students were moved in for the new school year. I can only assume that it will be torn down in the near future.


I did not expect this to happen so soon.

Looks like mold has made it uninhabitable.

Do they mean mould spores, perhaps?

If its not the mold inside, it's the loose, failed styrofoam cladding mixed with loose bricks on the outside that'll getcha!

Too bad. Brooks is arguably the better looking of the uOttawa residences. I'm hopeful we see a few of the towers replaced sooner than later.

Take a walk on campus... Brooks looks like a shabby 1990's Barrhaven townhouse development situated in the middle of a modern university campus. Couple that with totally failed cladding...

I always kind of liked the mid-rise scale of Brooks though I agree the cladding made it look somewhat dated.

Hopefully whatever replaces it will have a good street presence along King Edward.

I agree that Brooks looked shabby. Over the next twenty years the university wishes to build several new buildings, including revitalizing King Eddy.


However, with the completion of The Learning Crossroads (the food court has now opened) and STEM Complex, the university has not announced any immediate plans for the next building. Who knows where the next building will go.? My guess is that they will turn Brooks into green space until they are ready to build on that site. The Master Plan shows a small park and a building taking up the space that is now Brooks.


IMHO, the best uOttawa residences are 45Mann, Hyman Soloway, and especially the new Annex. Honourable mention goes to Henderson and Friel residences.

I was an undergrad student at U of O when the Brooks residence was being built. We thought it was such a cool, colourful, "human scale" development among all the brutalist concrete buildings. It even had some grass and trees planted around it. It was really a nice looking res at the time and also suited the King Edward side of the street. That was the late 80s...the campus has come such a long way since then. (In a good way!!)

I also really liked Brooks during undergrad. I started uni in 2000 and, compared to the massive apartment block at Thompson, Brooks had a great street-level vibe; kind of like a neighbourhood of its own in the middle of campus. The buildings were shabby but I never really noticed as most of my friends lived in overcrowded dumps in Sandy Hill. I hope they keep it lowrise when re-built and respect some of the surrounding architecture and neighbourhood. Or, if they want to build higher, maybe build an interior park or courtyard with a little pond or something....

Like this:

https://cdnassets.hw.net/dims4/GG/92690b...oda-architecture-10-montieth-street6.jpg

At a recent meeting we were confirmed by higher-ups that will Brooks will be torn down and a new 14~15story residence tower with retail on ground floor will take it's place. No exact dates yet but apparently they want it ready for 2023.

No plans, no details yet but that's where they're going. Which is pretty much what was said in the Campus Master Plan IIRC.

That's good news. The entire Brooks fronting on King Edward is a deadzone for useability. Will be nice to see added retail and better pedestrian usage on the whole, along with increased height.

Just one building? The Brooks Residences take up at least one city block, don't they?

Yeah, from Thomas More(Osgoode) to Marie-Curie(Somerset) but like I said no details yet (don't know when either). Hopefully something "innovative" and different.

Yeah, I really hope they step up their game and come up with a unique design.

If they stick to what is shown in the original release of the Campus Master Plan
--and there is no guarantee that they will--the Brooks site will have a taller building plus a portion of it will become King Edward Park.

https://www.uottawa.ca/facilities/sites/www.uottawa.ca.facilities/files/king_edward_precinct.jpg
https://www.uottawa.ca/facilities/master-plan/precincts

Re: The Sandy Hill Arena.

The Arena is old and energy inefficient. The City has long said that it wanted to get rid of/replace it. However, the land the arena sits on belongs to the NCC and is leased to the City. Sources at uOttawa have told me (I am a donor to Gee-Gee Sports) that the NCC has agreed to transfer/sell the land to uOttawa when uOttawa is ready to build a new Athletic Center on it (to replace the aging substandard Montpetit Hall). At the snail's pace that the university is gathering the resources for building an Athletic Center, it is still pretty far away.

U of O still pouring money into mouldy residence years after shutdown
Brooks Residence closed in 2018 due to mould and other concerns

CBC News
Posted: Sep 08, 2023 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 5 hours ago
https://i.cbc.ca/1.6959928.1694169874!/f...erivatives/16x9_780/brooks-residence.JPG

A long-closed residence continues to cost the University of Ottawa tens of thousands of dollars a month, internal documents show.

Documents obtained by Radio-Canada through a freedom of information request also suggest the university had suspected the presence of mould inside Brooks Residence years before it was closed in September 2018.

The university shut the building after mould spores were detected in some apartments, a spokesperson told Radio-Canada in an email.

According to the school, the mould was likely caused by construction defects that allowed water to infiltrate the building.

The university sent Radio-Canada the estimated electricity costs for the complex during each month from June 2019 to April 2023.

The bill for February 2023 alone was $43,000. The lowest monthly bill during that time period was $9,500 in September 2019.

Built for $23 million, the large residential complex on King Edward Avenue between Thomas More and Marie-Curie privates housed more than 700 students each year from 1987 to 2018.

Although its lifespan was estimated to be 60 years when it opened, the complex was only occupied for half that time.

Today, it sits nearly empty.

Only the Garderie Bernadette Child Care Centre, a parking lot and a few law school classrooms remain. Those facilities are housed in a building adjacent to the residence that's been unaffected by mould.

Much of the rest of the complex is cordoned off by yellow fences.

The University of Ottawa Students' Union has denounced the lack of information available about the residence.

Amine El Idrissi, the union's acting commissioner for Francophone affairs, said the university has lacked transparency and kept students in the dark on the future of the property.

He said he hopes the land the building occupies can be used to rehouse students facing obstacles to finding accommodations.

"To see this empty and dilapidated building is a pity for the university, but especially for our students," El Idrissi said.

This year, the University of Ottawa is expecting a waitlist of about 100 students once its 4,000 residence apartments have been filled.

Six years before the closure, the University of Ottawa suspected a considerable mould problem had developed between the walls of Brooks Residence.

In a draft letter to students dated December 2012, the university said inspections would be carried out between Christmas Day and New Year's Day. The problem, it said, "could lead to the evacuation of these buildings, if the health of the occupants is at stake."

Student relocations did not begin until February 2018, more than five years later.

Marcelle Desmornes, president of the union that represents support staff at the University of Ottawa, said in a French-language email she was "aware of the health and safety problems" that contributed to the closure of the residence.

"We have communicated our concerns to the employer," she said. "To date, the problems have not been resolved."

In an email to Radio-Canada, University of Ottawa spokesperson Jesse Robichaud said in French that water damage had been reported in the Brooks complex before 2018, but the decision to close the facility permanently was based on several factors, including the presence of mould spores.

Robichaud said the entire complex will eventually be demolished and replaced but a construction date has not yet been set.


With files from Radio-Canada's Gabriel Le Marquand Perreault

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/university-ottawa-mouldy-brooks-residence-housing-1.6959759

Meanwhile we're living with a housing shortage crisis and the university is sitting on all these derelict residential buildings... The presence of privately-owned university residences around OttawaU would also suggest that student housing around campus is very much in demand.

Wonder why the University is taking so long to do anything about these.