By Owen Ferguson
As the dispute over the Women’s Centre hostile takeover of the Clubs Room, a lot of space on campus goes unused because the school doesn’t have the money to maintain it.
Ryerson owns buildings at 297 Victoria St., south of Lake Devo, and 112/114 Bond St., south of the Image Arts building, but doesn’t use either of them.
“Neither of those buildings is in a usable condition,” said Manuel Ravinsky, Ryerson’s facilities planner.
“Although we do occasionally get requests for more space, there’s no suitable constituency on campus to justify the maintenance costs of those building,” Ravinsky said.
But Ravinsky was unsure how much money would be needed to make the buildings usable and to maintain them.
Campus Planning has no future plans for the buildings, he said, but they will not be sold because their high property value makes them worth holding on to.
David Steele, RyeSAC VP administration, agrees space is in great demand.
“Every year we get inundated by clubs and course unions,” Steele said. “A lot of these clubs are working out of lockers.”
But there is not money to fix up the old buildings, he said.
Instead, RyeSAC plans to reassign all rooms at the start of each year and only give space to those clubs that really need it.
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