Ryerson to build new residence

by Carolyn Turgeon
News Editor

Julia Hanigsberg, vice-president of administration and finance, held a campus news briefing in her office to announce Ryerson University’s plan to build a new student residence.

To meet the growing demand for student space, the university will be building a new residence at 186 and 188 Jarvis St., just south of Dundas and a five minute walk from Lake Devo.

The building will be developed uniquely for Ryerson students by MPI Group.

The proposed building will be 23 stories high and provide more than 500 new beds, increasing available residence space by 30 per cent.

To begin to expand our ability to meet the needs of our students is going to be an enormous benefit to all the students and to all perspective students coming after you,” said Hanigsberg. “We’re really pleased about and really excited to be moving forward.”

The current plan, designed by IBI Group Architects, features suites containing a mix of one to four bedrooms.

Hanigsberg explained that the university has been working on providing new residence space for at least two years and the deal was approved by the Board of Governors a few weeks ago.

Ryerson president Sheldon Levy had previously said that the problem with adding to residence was that the finances would have to be taken from the university’s operating budget.

This partnership means that MPI Group will provide the financial backing for the project instead of the Ryerson budget. They will also develop, design and build the residence.

Ryerson will provide the student tenants and residence life services staff, which MPI Group will also purchase from Ryerson.

“We think it becomes a really good model of combining areas where we have extremely strong expertise with areas where they have extremely strong expertise,” said Hanigsberg.

The residence is expected to begin construction in 2014 and open in September 2016. It will be the first wave of over 2000 new residence beds which have been approved by the Board of Governors.