I know what you’re thinking when you see the words “master plan”: a dark room, lit by a sole flickering light hanging right above a blueprint of both Camosun campuses laid out on a desk, with the scribblings of a mad genius scrawled all over those familiar campus landmarks. Well, the college’s Campus Master Plan 2019 isn’t quite that, but it is a big plan: it has 20 years of potential changes in it. Some of these changes are already in progress. They can move as quickly as the Alex & Jo Campbell Centre for Health and Wellness at Interurban did, or as slowly as the repairs of our stalemate symbol, the Young Building at Lansdowne.
When we look at the campuses, we can tell that the biggest difference between Interurban and Lansdowne is, of course, size. Lansdowne is definitely manageable for getting from building to building. Interurban, however, is more daunting to navigate, especially for a wee journalist like myself. (I start crying when I even look at the map. No thank you, sir—that is a mountain range for this small adventurer.)
But changes are exciting, and students and staff happily welcome them if the future provides a more enriching campus life. Well, most staff and students. There are elements of the Master Plan that have some Camosun staffers upset, such as the destruction of Interurban’s John Drysdale Building.
Then there are things that people are more excited about, such as student housing at both campuses and getting the Young Building—the final boss in this game—looking presentable again.
Camosun chief financial officer and interim vice president of administration Deborah Huelscher says that the plan, which cost approximately $200,000 to create, is a long-term vision for the college, and the Master Plan itself is the architectural planners’ expert opinion about what the campus could be, taking funding into consideration. She says that the planners—architectural firm Thinkspace—looked at what makes sense with the layouts of the campuses and provided input as to what could be done better.
“For example, they were very positive about the Lansdowne campus, that we have the corridor and the buildings are all so close together,” says Huelscher. “Interurban, we have gaps between, for example, where the [Centre for Trades Education and Innovation] building is, and the campus is a little bit stretched out. So they’ve made recommendations to us as to what could be done, and as funding becomes available for our buildings or renovations, we would look back to the plan for what is being put on the table for guidance to it.”
It’s important to realize the plan is only a list of recommendations; Huelscher says that to follow through on the plan would require more resources than the college currently has (she says that the architects provided an order of magnitude cost estimate of $170-plus million to implement the recommended projects over a period of approximately 15 to 20 years, and adds that the college expects to adapt the plan as opportunities present themselves in the coming years).
The plans for a fresh Camosun are beyond a paint job, and they need a thorough process to map out the plan of attack. We need a complete blueprint of the campus before and after, and we need to address the problems of the plan before it’s too late.
STEP ONE: THE DRYSDALE BUILDING
Not all Camosun staff agree with the idea of sacrificing the Drysdale Building. Drysdale houses the Carpentry and Pipe Trades programs. It has an important purpose, but the Master Plan suggests its removal, putting in its place a quadrangle for students to easily congregate, move from building to building, and see the rest of the college, namely the Centre for Trades Education and Innovation, which is more or less invisible from anywhere on campus.
Camosun Plumbing and Pipe Trades chair Jamie McPherson disagrees with the idea of removing the Drysdale Building.
“I don’t think that the people on the committee that are making this decision have actually taken a walk through to see what they’re displacing and what they’d have to replicate in another area, and to see how badly we’re short of space already, let alone them wanting to give us a smaller footprint,” says McPherson. “People are coming from all over BC to attend our facility. Now, if we’re not going to be able to offer these classes, they’re going to be going away from that.”
Huelscher says that she has heard concerns about the suggestion to tear down Drysdale; she says that removing the building is “definitely a long-term recommendation” for the college but also says that there was talk of removing Drysdale before the Master Plan was released.
“We have our fairly new trades building that sits on the hill on the other side. Even when we were designing that particular building, the idea has been to remove the Drysdale Building and create a corridor or a path that would bring the trades building into the centre of the campus,” says Huelscher. “There wasn’t funding available to do that at the time. So again, these planners have made the same recommendation, and it could be something we look at down the road, but it’s definitely not something, I would say, even within the next 10 years that we would be considering. Part of removing that building would require us to add space to Jack White or build another building to look after the programs that are in that building. So that’s definitely long-term and not a guarantee that we’re going to do that. Again, the goal is about improving campus connectivity.”
McPherson says that Drysdale is doing well structurally and that this would just result in less space for the programs.
“The building itself, structurally, is in great shape. It was built at the same time as Jack White. Does there need to be some upgrades in there? Certainly. But this is a $30-million building if we had to rebuild it,” says McPherson. “We’re short [on] space here already, and we’re trying to address that. I don’t see how creating a sightline is being very green when you think about all the extra stuff to tear this one down to rebuild another building.”
The problem here is that a quadrangle would be suitable as a bigger, communal area. Adding a flat courtyard where a fully functioning building is won’t help students navigate the campus. Interurban is already so massive that a student courtyard would need a more central location.
STEP TWO: STUDENT HOUSING
One of the most student-oriented aspects of the Master Plan is building a “public realm” on the campuses, which would mean more people would spend more time at Camosun. This could include creating art galleries, more places for social gatherings, and further additions to represent Camosun’s Indigenous cultures.
Student housing is at the heart of this.
Plans for building student housing are slowly in progress for both Lansdowne and Interurban. There are two possible spaces on either side of Lansdowne, one being an extension to the Isabel Dawson Building, and one a potential part of an upgrade for the Young Building. Interurban has designated an upper floor extension for Huber Hall for student housing.
Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) external executive Fillette Umulisa wants student housing to become a reality.
“I really do hope that it happens because there are a lot of students here that struggle with housing issues and the prices that are here in Victoria,” says Umulisa. “I specifically remember during last year’s municipal election, the student society and its campaign team [went] out to all of those public assemblies to ask questions in regards to that… Almost every single response was, ‘That is the job of the college.’”
Victoria’s rental prices are certainly unrealistic for college students, as Umulisa points out. She hopes that the convenience of campus housing would lead to a stress-free school life.
“I feel like it’s going to create some level of convenience. I find some students find cheaper housing so far [away], like in Langford and places that are really hard to commute from,” says Umulisa. “This is a central location. You can go downtown in five minutes. You can stay right here and school is right here.”
Umulisa says that the campus lifestyle would change dramatically with student housing; she says it would build a greater sense of community within the school, and she adds that it could mean more businesses opening up on campus.
“For example, the Dunlop House being a common place where people go to; it’s open sometimes during the semester on Thursdays, but it’s not regular,” says Umulisa. “And a bigger cafeteria. A lot more services as well, maybe movie screenings and cafes. Maybe the political structure will change as well, and we’d have debates.”
But in order to create this campus life, the college needs to attract residents, and in order to that at Lansdowne, there’s one historical landmark in particular that needs to be dealt with.
STEP THREE: THE YOUNG BUILDING
The Young Building, the centre of everyone’s attention, is in the middle of drama as usual. Locked in a stalemate over repairs for years, the most the college can do as it waits for a solution is to maintain the building’s structure, hence the fences separating students from easy access to the rest of the campus. As a heritage building, its age certainly restrains workers from doing just anything to help it. Fortunately, we’ve come farther with the Young Building than we were five years ago, but that’s not saying much.
CCSS executive director Michel Turcotte says that the real problem of the Young Building is the physical aspect.
“It’s a heritage building, so we can’t tear it down,” says Turcotte. “The only option is to repair it and make it safe.”
Huelscher says that Young is “a really important building” and is probably Camosun’s most recognized landmark. She says that because the building—and the land in front of it—has a heritage designation, “it kind of ties our hands with what we can do with it.”
“There is an issue right now with the exterior of the building,” says Huelscher. “Back in 2000, there was some work done on the building… They did the building envelope, and there was a flaw in the process which led to pieces coming off.”
Huelscher says that the college is looking to do the remediation on the exterior, but it comes down to funding. She says that Camosun has some funds that can go toward it from its insurance proceeds, but it’s not enough, as she says the building “requires significant remediation inside.”
“There’s nothing structurally wrong, it’s just that it’s a building that’s 100 years old,” she says. “This is a priority for us on our capital plan that goes into the ministry. The proposal is to do the exterior and interior at the same time. We’re just, of course, waiting for funding for that, or looking for funding for that. At the same time, we were also asked by the ministry to look at what opportunities there could be to go beyond just doing a remediation and look at enhancing the interior—putting in more modern student space, collaboration space, et cetera, in classrooms. So we’re working on doing that. It’s at a very high level, but it’ll just give us a sense of what the incremental cost to either expand or enhance that work would look like, and we’ll have an idea for what that will be within the next two or three months, I think.”
Updating the Young Building would be well worth the wait and effort, but how is that possible when it can’t get the help it needs? What would an updated version look like? Would it still retain its structure? Evidently, as far as master plans go, the majority of this one is hypothetical, but hopefully the Young Building is repaired soon and students can have a building that they can love going to and have no problem entering any one of the doors or going to and from other buildings on campus without taking frustrating detours.
The Camosun Campus Master Plan 2019 needs more approval from the masses and more considerate planning from the committee, especially regarding the Drysdale Building. Our hope is that the committee hears the needs of the programs impacted and follows through with sensible action.
With student housing, the college needs to take a few more steps to build campus life first to attract potential residents.
But the biggest problem in front of us is the iconic Young Building, and we can only hope to save it. What was once a beautiful building has been an eyesore at Lansdowne for years, and if the college wants to build an on-campus community, the campus’ most well-known landmark can’t keep looking like it does today.
Looking to the years ahead of us is undeniably exciting. However, as any mad genius knows, master plans take a lot of time and a lot of work, and involve a lot of people. No doubt about it, not everyone is going to be happy with everything in Camosun’s master plan. But one day, maybe we’ll be walking around the Young Building again or lounging on the grass where Drysdale used to be and we’ll say, “Hey, you know what? That was a good idea.”
Or maybe not.