Retiring University of Manitoba president Emoke Szathmary unveiled a $100-million-plus legacy project Wednesday that will change the face of the Fort Garry campus.
All told, 13 faculties and departments will be affected by the massive undertaking.
Outgoing University of Manitoba president Emoke Szathmary outside Tache Hall, which will become a centre for fine arts and music excellence. Thirteen faculties and departments will be affected.
Music, art, biological sciences, international and graduate students could be delightedly dancing in the quadrangle once they hear about the new digs that U of M has planned for them under Project Domino.
"At its heart is really sustainability," Szathmary said in an exclusive interview with the Free Press. "It will allow us to use several historic buildings -- if you went in and saw them, you'd cry" at their current condition.
Project Domino would start this summer and take five years to complete. There would be only one new building, a residence to be built just south of the existing Tache Hall residence along the Red River.
But the dominoes would fall throughout the Fort Garry campus, faculties and departments and programs leaving one space to move to a better one, and leaving behind square footage, classrooms and labs to be filled.
Music Building: becomes International House
Existing buildings would look the same from the outside, but inside they'd be refurbished, retrofitted and repaired. U of M is calling the moves "bundling" that is environmentally sensitive and sustainable -- moving scattered programs into one area, moving associated programs into close proximity, while forgoing hugely expensive new construction.
The money will come from the university's capital campaign, from donors soon to be announced, naming rights on buildings put to new uses, and, Szathmary hopes, the provincial government. She would not say Wednesday how much U of M needs from the Doer government, nor would Szathmary break down the costs of individual parts of the project.
Finance Minister Greg Selinger and Advanced Education Minister Diane McGifford could not be reached Wednesday.
The university would recover the capital and operating cost of the new residence building over several decades through students' rent.
Several factors triggered the domino effect, said Szathmary and Alan Simms, associate vice-president of administration.
The century-old Tache residence lacks amenities students take for granted, such as Internet access, but upgrading would be expensive.
Meanwhile, the costs for building the anticipated Centre for Music, Art and Design soared to $40 million, far beyond anyone's wildest forecast.
And pharmacy is moving this summer to a new building on the Bannerman medical campus, leaving behind empty space at Fort Garry.
The faculty of music is scattered among four buildings on campus. It would move into a refurbished Tache Hall, whose boarded-up auditorium would become a 400-seat performing arts theatre.
"As a residence, it's far outlived its purpose," Simms said.
"Project Domino is one of the most impressive university-facilities plans I have seen. The project will provide much-needed infrastructure, and it will retrofit and preserve an important historic component of the campus," said music dean Edmund Dawe, adding that music would have as good or better facilities as it would have enjoyed in the original plans for a new building.
Moving the school of art, also into the Tache residence, frees up 40,000 square feet, said Simms. The graduate studies department would move into the current art school.
"This would enable us to develop a fabulous profile for graduate studies," said Szathmary. "Everywhere across Canada, the emphasis is on graduate education."
Pharmacy leaves behind six labs, which biological sciences covet. In turn, that would free up the zoology labs for human nutrition to move in, said Szathmary.
As for the existing 23,000-square-foot main music space, the formerly proposed new building for International House also ran well beyond budget projections -- and it was planned for around 23,000 square feet. That vacant space would house the university's English language training programs, space and services for international students, and, ideally, Szathmary said, space for receptions and formal greetings that are standard in Asian universities.
Szathmary said U of M is confident it can raise the money, some of which will come through naming rights for the new use of the buildings.
"We have some of that in hand," she said.
The university is emphasizing that the campus remains the same size and that there is only one new structure. Project Domino saves and uses historic buildings. "This is very prudent budgeting," she said.
nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca
How the dominoes will fall in place
The university builds a new 350-bed Tache residence on the south side of campus along the Red River, immediately south of existing residences.
The planned Centre for Music, Art and Design moves into the existing residence, and includes a 400-seat performing arts centre in the boarded-up auditorium.
The planned International House moves its English language programs, and its services and space for international students into the current main faculty of music space.
The school of art leaves behind its space in the Fitzgerald Building, which would become the faculty of graduate studies.
Pharmacy moves to a new building on the Bannatyne medical campus. Into the current pharmacy space moves the amalgamation of zoology and botany into biological sciences. Zoology in turn leaves behind its labs for the use of human nutrition.
The faculty of music abandons its small space in the faculty of education, which makes room for an architecture studio -- now housed in a temporary tin hut.
PREVIOUS
