NAIT plan to use land decades away
Keith Gerein
Edmonton Journal
Friday, July 10, 2009
City council's vote to close the City Centre Airport has suddenly opened up a world of expansion possibilities for NAIT, but the school may have no use for the land for 20 to 50 years.
"That's the time frame you need to be thinking about," NAIT president Sam Shaw said Thursday.
"When you start looking at MIT or Cal Tech or Georgia Tech, their visions are 20 to 40 to 50 years and they have the land acquired to allow them to grow into the future.
"With the decision by city council, that allows us the opportunity to grow over the next 50 or whatever number of years."
While the soon-to-be available land may be raising excitement, Advanced Education and Technology Minister Doug Horner said his department has no plans to construct any buildings.
He said the provincial government hands out project funding based on where the greatest needs and demands are, and right now that doesn't include a huge campus expansion for NAIT.
As such, he suggested city councillors were mistaken if their vote to shut down the airport was based, in part, on a belief NAIT would soon be ready to move onto the site.
"Using that as an excuse or reason to close the airport, I'd have to wonder about that," Horner said.
"There has been no indication from this department or this minister that if the airport was to close tomorrow, we'd start planning NAIT's expansion the day after. That's not happening. The city making a decision to close does not do anything to change our planning process."
Councillors voted Wednesday to shut the City Centre Airport in stages, starting with runway 16-34, which lies just west of NAIT's main campus. As part of the decision, they ordered negotiations begin immediately with the institute about occupying the freed space.
But Shaw said his school's first priority is to build a new centre for applied technologies on land it already owns on main campus. That proposed facility--slated to house programs in business, health sciences and engineering technology --will take care of an immediate space crunch caused by heavy student demand.
Long term, however, the school needs to consolidate its operations, he said.
The institute is currently spread out across 12 facilities.
"If we can shrink down to one, then you are economizing."
A few years ago, NAIT unveiled plans for a massive $517-million Ralph Klein Campus on the city's southern edge that was touted to be the future home of many of the school's heavy trades programs.
The project has since been pushed to the back burner, and Shaw said NAIT will now start talking to the province about eventually using those plans for the airport lands. The proposal includes a number of new academic buildings, labs and residences.
Consolidating the institute's operations on one site makes sense for a number of reasons, especially since the city plans to build a new LRT line to main campus, said Geoff Tate, president of the NAIT Students' Association.
One "super-campus" would remove the need for the institute to have multiple libraries, student service offices and athletic facilities, he said.
Furthermore, he said many of the current facilities on the main campus are aging and in need of costly maintenance.
Having expansion room gives the school an opportunity to reduce those costs by constructing more efficient buildings.
Student housing should be part of any future development, and the school might consider creating a kind of "research park" that would involve collaborations between academics and entrepreneurs, Tate said.
"There are infinite hopes and finite resources, and our needs have to be balanced with those of the University of Alberta, Grant MacEwan College and others," he said. "Our argument is that the Alberta economy is built on tradespeople and the demand for them keeps increasing.
"The dollars to back that also have to keep increasing if we want to keep the economy going."
However, Horner isn't sure it makes sense to start talking about moving the Ralph Klein Campus north to the airport. The entire project will likely have to be re-evaluated because what's needed today may not be needed 20 years from now, he said. "You may need a huge computer classroom instead of a huge shop."
© The Edmonton Journal 2009
Copyright © 2009 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved.
CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved.
http://www2.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=c02ef165-d6ea-475b-b7e3-14f3f2145a95&sponsor=
Prev
)
)
.
Linear Mode
