Olds College outlined plans for a new 400-unit Centennial Village residence on Nov. 20 during an open house that was attended by about 30 people.
The event gave those in attendance the opportunity to hear from the college, Shunda Construction, the company that will build the residence, and IBI Group Architects Engineers, the firm that designed the building.
The building, which will be located directly east of the Olds Aquatic Centre and south of Frank Grisdale Hall, will encompass four floors totalling 11,250 square metres and include a 76.5-square-metre coffee shop and a second retail space totalling 315 square metres. The building will have an outside courtyard and a footbridge on the fourth floor will join the two parallel sides of the horseshoe-shaped building. Traffic into the building will be controlled through access codes.
Tanya Kure, a project manager with Shunda Construction, explained that before construction drawings were started about nine months ago, college and Olds High School students were invited to give their feedback on aspects of the building such as the size of the desks in the rooms and the size of the windows.
Jonathan Steel, one of the architects on the project, told the assembled group that the design team tried to make the building as connected to the rest of the campus as possible with the inclusion of the retail spaces, the footbridge and two boot rooms at opposite ends of the building so that agricultural students, for example, would take off footwear and other clothing without tracking mud through the building.
Steel said the design focused on the single student and then from there connected the single student to a larger community of students.
“As we developed the design, we've really encouraged the social aspects,” he said.
Some of the existing facilities at Frank Grisdale Hall, such as the cafeteria, will still be used, but ultimately, the future of FGH hasn't been determined, said Kathy Kimpton, vice-president of student and support services at the college. The college is constructing the residences because Frank Grisdale Hall no longer meets the needs of students.
When asked by members of the crowd about construction materials, Steel said some of the building uses wood-frame construction while it also incorporates steel studs on the interior of the building. Some of the building will be closed off by partitions so that space can be configured differently in the future, depending on needs. There is no air conditioning in the student rooms. Hot water heating will be used throughout the building.
Following the meeting, Steel said the design of the building was predicated on the individual room.
“It can make the building bigger, it can make the building smaller, it can make it fit the site or it can make it too big for the site. There's a real balance because there's a defined piece of land, which this thing needs to be set on. If you made the rooms too large, then it would press up against the edges of the site and it would feel really crammed and there wouldn't be any amenity space,” he said.
Steel said everything about the design is meant to enhance efficiency and the student experience.
“We really want this to be a community,” he said.
The plan is to have the residences ready for occupation by January 2015. Shunda Construction hopes to have the construction drawings finalized by the first week in December and will submit a development permit to the town following the completion of the drawings.
Construction on a new parking lot at the college began last month in preparation for the new residences planned for the campus.
The new parking lot is located northwest of the Community Learning Campus. The college is also constructing a new parking lot directly east of Normie Kwong Park for staff and students at Olds High School.
“Given where we are in the time of year and understanding that the moment we start construction on that (project) we better have parking figured out, we don't need to hold up that (parking) process,” Kimpton said.
