Board Updated About Progress On Building Projects

Wed, February 28, 2024

St. Clair won’t be rolling out the Welcome Centre’s welcome mat quite as early as it had hoped.

Construction delays associated with the new building at main campus mean that its completion/opening will be delayed for about a month, to the end of July.

A report from the administration at the Board of Governors’ February 27th meeting said the project was coming in on-budget, at or slightly below its $13.5 million estimate.

The two-storey, 16,000-square-foot addition to the front of the main building (between the front entrance and the Classic Gym) will bring together a half-dozen of the college’s most frequently used offices, to create a “one-stop shop” atmosphere for current and prospective students.

Departments settling in the Welcome Centre will include the Registrar’s Office, Financial Aid, Student Retention and Academic Advising, Academic Counselling, International Recruitment, Parking and the One Card office.

That will mean that the spaces currently occupied by those departments – now scattered all over the main building – will eventually be repurposed, as either office space for new users or as additional classrooms. Plans are already underway for those changes, budgeted to cost $1.5 million. That money was approved by the Board during its meeting, although it won’t actually be allocated until the 2024-25 budget-year starting in April.

One feature of the new Welcome Centre has already been named. The spacious, greenery-and-artwork-laden atrium will be named in honour of the college’s Alumni Association, thanks to its donation of $500,000 to the construction project.

The report to the Board also featured some new information about other college building projects.

Parking: The Board was told that an investigation of the feasibility of expanding parking by constructing a one-level deck atop of “C” lot concluded that that idea was financially ridiculous: “the cost per (deck) parking spot being approximately $90,000 greater than the cost per parking spot for a ground surface parking lot”.

That report also noted that by expanding a number of existing lots by several dozen spots per site, the college could create more spaces (263) than it would have obtained (250) with the expensive deck. (About half of this work has already been done.)

Still, the report noted, the cost of surface lot construction has been more expensive than had initially been forecast a couple of years ago. General inflation and inflated construction bids (because large-scale contractors are extremely busy at the moment) mean that the lot expansions (and abutting walkways) will cost approximately $2.5 million more than was initially forecast in 2022.

Deferred Maintenance: Finally, the Board received its annual update about the largest annual building-related expense faced by the college: the renovations and repairs associated with the fact that a great many of its buildings and infrastructure systems are decades old. (The province-wide college system was founded in 1967, so St. Clair’s main building at main campus is now almost 60 years old.) The upkeep of all of that property – 26 buildings at all campuses, with 1.78 million square feet of interior space, located on 182 acres – is referred to as “deferred maintenance”: a never-ending challenge to carry out repairs as facilities age.

Building Condition Assessments (BCAs) conducted by the Facilities Management Department and its consultants estimate that St. Clair currently faces a “three-year (2022 to 2025) and ten-year (2022 to 2032) deferred maintenance backlog of $104.3 million and $314.3 million respectively.”

While it may never be able to devote all of the money it wants to those renovation-and-repair tasks, the college does annually spend both some of its own revenue (dedicated reserves) and some earmarked provincial grant money to this “to-do list”.

According to the report, “The deferred maintenance internal reserve withdrawal request for the 2024-25 fiscal year budget will be $25 million. This will be brought forward to the Board of Governors at the March meeting. This includes numerous projects with estimated values, including: carry-over items from 2023-24 ($5.12 million), vacated space renovations ($410,000), Phase 2 of watermain replacements ($600,000), roofing restoration ($3 million); along with windows, doors, building sealing, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, controls systems replacements, flooring, and ceiling replacements. In order for this work to be completed within the 2024-25 fiscal year, the college must make contractual commitments to contractors before April 1, 2024.”

Board Updated About Progress On Building Projects

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