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<\/a>Construction on the building, which will be where the Tillicum Lodge used to be before it was removed last year, is set to begin in early March and Sehn says the college aims to have the new facility open by September of 2015. He says the new building will be an upgrade on the existing facilities, which are in need of some change.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur buildings right now are obviously showing their age,\u201d says Sehn, \u201cand I think we\u2019re going to have learning spaces that are a lot more user-friendly, a lot more natural light is a big part of it, a very energy-efficient building.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sehn says there has been no significant opposition to the project, and part of the reason for that may be that Camosun\u0143who are the largest trades trainers on the island, training 2,200 students each year\u0143has been doing trades training at Interurban for over 40 years, so the community is used to the campus and its expansion. Plus, as Sehn explains, they\u2019re not adding as much as it may initially seem.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we\u2019re really doing is improving our space,\u201d he says. \u201cThere are a bunch of old buildings being used [currently], these old wooden portables that foundation carpentry students built 25 years ago, and they\u2019re falling apart. That\u2019s four classrooms ; we\u2019re still using them, they\u2019re horrible, but we\u2019re using them. We have no choice, because we have nowhere else to put people. Everybody agrees that those things have got to go. So we\u2019ll be demolishing those four buildings. We\u2019ll have 10 new classrooms in the new building, but we\u2019re taking out four, so the net gain is actually six.\u201d<\/p>\n
This also helped quell Saanich council\u2019s concerns about an increase in students both driving to and parking at the campus; it won\u2019t add huge numbers, just give a better building to those already there, while adding a small amount of new students.<\/p>\n
The environmental concerns were also something the college had in mind. \u201cThere are some issues, of course, putting a trades building there without some impact, obviously, on the land,\u201d says Camosun vice president, administration and chief financial officer Peter Lockie. \u201cYou just never know, taking it to council, whether they\u2019d have some issues there. We satisfied council that we\u2019d done everything we could to minimize the impact on the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not only is Camosun attempting to minimize impact on the environment, they\u2019re aiming to take this building all the way to LEED Gold certification, which means it will meet a set of strict environmental guidelines.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith a trades facility, that\u2019s very challenging, considering some of the work going on in there,\u201d says Lockie. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be challenging to get LEED Gold, but we have a plan to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lockie adds that Camosun put no shortage of research into the planning out of the building. He calls it a \u201ccontemporary trades training facility\u201d and stresses the legwork that went into the planning process.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur team went around BC and Alberta touring new facilities and learned from the mistakes and the best features of all those facilities,\u201d says Lockie. \u201cSo what it\u2019s going to give is a state of the art teaching and learning facility for students going forward. That\u2019s really what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) are also pleased to see the project moving ahead.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re pleased that Saanich council has greenlighted the construction of this building,\u201d says CCSS external executive Simka Marshall. \u201cOur trades students are currently housed in really aging facilities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marshall says that the CCSS is \u201cexcited that this is happening,\u201d and she\u2019s hopeful that it might lead to more upgrades at Camosun.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn addition to this, there are a lot of other improvements and new buildings that we need,\u201d she says. \u201cHopefully this is just the beginning to seeing improvements all around campus.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the meantime, Sehn is looking ahead, focusing on construction to begin.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re extremely excited and I can\u2019t wait to see that site start to get leveled off. Then it\u2019ll really get exciting,\u201d says Sehn, adding with a chuckle that it will also \u201cbe noisy, and dusty.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saanich municipal council recently approved the construction of Centre for Trades Education and Innovation, a new trades facility at Camosun\u2019s Interurban campus. As mentioned in last issue\u2019s News Briefs, the $30-million project received a unanimous approval from council, much to Camosun\u2019s delight. \u201cI\u2019m very, very pleased,\u201d says Camosun dean of trades and technology Eric Sehn. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,121],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-february-5-2014"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8527"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8539,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8527\/revisions\/8539"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}