New residence name revealed today

By Brent Constantin

The University of Calgary is announcing the name of its newest student residence this Thursday at 4 p.m. and is also opening up the building to visitors for the first time.

The 596 bed residence is planned to open May 2011 for the summer conference season before housing students the following September.

Though she wouldn’t reveal the name, vice-provost students Ann Tierney said the event will host many members from the campus community to see the university’s latest addition against their growing need for student residence.

“What we’re launching is sort of a multi-year residence guarantee for students,” said Tierney. “We already guarantee first-year students a spot in residence if they apply by the required date and now we’re gong to provide them with a guarantee of a residence space for two years if they meet the conditions.”

Second-year science student Danica Wilkinson said she saw students in their second year unable to get back into residence.

“Lots of people couldn’t get in again and they were forced onto the waiting list, which was like 500 or 700 people deep,” said Wilkinson. “There’s tons of people that couldn’t get in.”

The school hopes to provide students in later years of their program with apartment style housing, as opposed to first-year students who often share a bedroom in Rundle or Kananaskis.

The new facility will increase the number of beds from about 1,900 to 2,500 but even with the new space the demand for growth is still there.

“We’ve been working with our facilities groups on campus on our long range residence plan,” said Tierney. “Our next issue will be deciding what we do with some of the older Olympic legacy buildings. Will we be doing substantial renovations to those or will we actually decommission them and replace them with new buildings?”

The cost of the residence was budgeted at $57 million.