New trades building set to open at Camosun’s Interurban campus in September

Camosun College’s new trades building is set to open its doors in September. The $30-million Centre for Trades Education and Innovation will house the college’s automotive, heavy-duty commercial transport, nautical, sheet metal, welding, and metal fabrication departments.

The 80,000-square-foot building, which is being built to LEED Gold standards, adds to Camosun’s existing 17,000 square feet of trades space. And the college couldn’t be happier about it.

“We’re stoked,” says Camosun chair of architectural trades Al Van Akker. “It’s the first major change in 40 years. The buildings that we have are doing the job… just. This is going to be a thoroughly modern school that’s going to have a nice feel to it, it’s going to have the latest and greatest in terms of equipment, and it’s going to have the space to do it. No more desks and chairs on shop floors and turning storage rooms into classrooms.”

Currently, both of those situations do exist in the Interurban trades spaces; this difficulty finding proper space for trades training is something that the new building will remedy, says Van Akker.

“I call this ‘rightsizing,’” says Van Akker. “I’ve certainly had conversations with folks where they say it’s great that we’ll be able to expand our training and get a lot more students. We will get some more students, but what we’ll be able to do is to properly accommodate the students that we’ve already been taking on. So, for example, with carpentry in these outbuildings, we’re basically taking what had been used as storage and then putting up temporary walls and turning that into classroom space.”

The $30 million funding for the building is coming from the Ministry of Advanced Education. It’s not quite enough to do everything Camosun wants to do with the building, so they’ve been doing some fundraising to try to come up with an additional $5 million. At press time they had raised $1.5 million when they had expected to raise $1 million, which Van Akker says is “phenomenal.”

Once the new building is finished, both the John Drysdale and Jack White buildings will be renovated (about $1 million of the $30 million is for renovation of the existing buildings).

Most of the residents of Jack White will be relocated to the new building, says Van Akker, and both those existing buildings will continue to have trades departments in them as well.

Advanced Education Minister Andrew Wilkinson says that the new facility will result in more students graduating with the skills they need to be employed.

“Through BC’s Skills for Jobs Blueprint we are expanding skilled and trades training capacity throughout the province,” says Wilkinson. “Camosun College is the largest trades training institution on Vancouver Island, and the $30-million Centre for Trades Education and Innovation will mean even more students will graduate job-ready for sectors, such as shipbuilding, forestry, and oil and gas, that support a diverse, strong, and growing economy.”

Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) external executive Andrea Eggenberger says that the student society approves of seeing the government putting money towards the building.

“The CCSS supports any government investment in the college infrastructure,” says Eggenberger, “and encourages the government of BC to do more, as there are other needs at the college.”

Eggenberger says the student society would like to see the government invest in “other programs at Camosun, not just the one that suits the government’s liquified natural gas agenda,” and also address maintenance issues (“The Young building, for example, is pretty much falling down,” she says). However, she says that the CCSS does value all students getting the facilities they need.

“We think it’s very important that the trades is getting this building,” says Eggenberger, “because we think all students should have the appropriate facilities for their program.”