Justin Bell - managing editor 

The Students’ Association of MacEwan is taking the first steps in building an independent facility, a separate building for the SA near campus.

Students’ council is currently debating a motion to put $50,000 into a feasibility study for an independent SA building. That money would come from the capital development fund.

Students’ Association President Nils Holmgren said the decision was made to look into it now because of the university’s recent single sustainable campus announcement, where all MacEwan’s facilities are being moved to the City Centre campus.

“We felt that by being proactive we can build ourselves into that plan so that later on, when the plan sort of complete and they’re not making any more changes, we’re not sitting there saying ‘oh, but what about us?’”

Holmgren said he attended an open house for the campus consolidation and space for the Students’ Association was at the bottom of the list of priorities. With a growing population at the downtown campus, he said there’s an increasing need for student space.

“We’d like to start a discussion around this idea,” said Holmgren.

He said there has been some discussion as to what the SA would like to see included in a new building, from retail services to the possibility of a diversity centre or a new health and wellness centre to provide greater access to gym services.

The timeline for the proposal is still fairly long. Approval from council, if it gets passed, won’t come until mid to late February, meaning the request for proposals won’t open until almost March.

After that, it’s tough to say how long it would take before the SA could have its own building. The feasibility study will examine where a possible building could go, revenue generation sources as well as if the whole project is even worth it.

Holmgren said there has been some initial discussion with other student groups as to their processes to pay for new buildings or upgrades. 

The Students’ Association of Mount Royal University is one such group who recently finished a major renovation to their building, Wyckham House. That project, which doubled the size of the building and increased the number of students coming through the doors, cost $15 million and took more than a decade from inception to completion.

“It was about 1996 that we determined that the building we built in 1987 was no longer meeting our needs,” said Marcy Fogal, the general manager for the Students’ Association of MRU.

Students at MRU voted on a proposal for a fee increase in 2000 to pay for the upgrades. They initially paid $3 per semester, but moved up to $40 per semester to pay for the renovations.

Negotiations with Mount Royal were finished in 2005 and construction was complete in October 2008. 

But not all buildings take that long to complete. MacEwan’s two newest—the Robbins Health Learning Centre and the residence—took between three and four years from feasibility study to completion, according to Stuart MacLean, the director of facilities for MacEwan. The Robbins cost $64 million to construct, while the residence was $41 million. But that’s not the biggest cost involved in new buildings.

“Although this is a major one-time cost, the major cost is the ongoing amount required to operate, maintain and repair, clean and provide utilities for the full life of the building,” said MacLean.

At the University of Alberta, the Students’ Union Building (known on campus as SUB) costs more than $1 million annually to operate.

“These buildings aren’t cheap to operate,” said Marc Dumouchel, the general manager of the U of A Students’ Union.

Dumouchel said it’s important to bring in retail services, such as food vendors or bookstores, in order to offset the costs associated with running a large building.