By Joe Johnson (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: May 23, 2012
UFV took another major step earlier this month in its relatively short history as a full-fledged university; on Friday, May 11, the future of UFV in Chilliwack was realized with a ribbon-cutting ceremony to open a new academic building at Canada Education Park (CEP).
This 150,000 square-foot building marks a transition away from the previous Chilliwack campus on Yale Road to the 85,000 acre CEP which lies along the Vedder River and is already home to the Trades and Technology Centre.
With this new building comes the ability for UFV to better compartmentalize its varied programs. Chilliwack is focused on sciences and wellness; the Mission campus will be centred on the Graphic and Digital Design program; the Abbotsford campus will be more based on the liberal arts.
The official opening of the building represents years of planning and working with all different levels of government. While many people were involved with the project in some form or another, particular notables at the ribbon cutting were MP Mark Strahl, Advanced Education Minister Naomi Yamamoto, Campus Planning executive director Craig Toews, UFV president Mark Evered, MLA John Les, and Student Union Society president Carlos Vidal.
“I’m honoured and delighted to be opening the second major building on our new campus at the Canada Education Park,” said Evered, when later asked to comment on the ceremony. “This is the fulfillment of the dreams of our predecessors and colleagues at UFV and our many supporters in the Chilliwack region,” he continued. “It marks the beginning of a new phase in our development, but one that remains true to our commitment to both quality education and community advancement.”
Toews, whose role is the backbone to every UFV capital project, noted another aspect of the ribbon-cutting ceremony. “The aboriginal community thanked the workers involved with the construction of the building,” Toews explained. “It was a very nice way to open up the facility and thank them for their work.”
What began as an idea when the Canadian Forces Base left the land 15 years ago has now evolved into the building which will now contain approximately a fifth of UFV’s total student population when the fall semester begins. Students from the Kinesiology, Nursing and Dental programs are among those which will be moving in and use the state-of-the-art equipment and classrooms.
“There are two level two biology labs, a brand new chemistry lab, dry labs,” Toews noted. “Kinesiology is moving to this campus, so they’re going to have a human performance centre with a first ever EEG room where they hook up students to various test equipment and go through different research activities. And there’s going to be an environmental chamber so they can do training and testing under different environmental conditions, moisture and temperature and oxygen.”
The building itself is UFV’s first to be LEED Gold certified, meaning it follows strict adherence to sustainability. As Toews noted, one of the major features (in addition to solar-thermal heating) is an “open source geo-exchange system.” This involves tapping into Chilliwack’s extremely high-quality aquifer to “bring out water to supply the heat pumps to cool and heat the building.”
Toews also commented on the detailed aesthetics, such as “polished concrete floors, wood, glazing, and … colour schemes [to] give it a warm, earthy feeling, [as opposed to] the cold military engineering building that used to be there.”
Another important element of the CEP campus is one that students will recognize from the Abbotsford campus – a Tim Horton’s. “Seeing the success of Timmy’s here on Abbotsford Campus, we’ve plugged that into this building,” Toews explained, “and actually very intentionally created an element that hopefully will cause some cross traffic between the Trades Centre. So the Trades students and faculty will come to this building to get their Timmy’s coffee, and the culinary program at the Trades centre will offer a more formal hot entree meals that you can walk over there to get.”
In addition to UFV’s extensive planning there has also been considerable work done by the city of Chilliwack. While Abbotsford is planning a U-District buildup of services around the campus, there’s a similar sort of area developing in the vicinity of CEB; the Garrison development is already 10 years in, and includes housing and retail locations.
However, transit between campuses remains as a question mark. A bus between the two has long been a topic of debate, but according to Vidal, “right now it would still take about another two to three years to get a city line going.” In the meantime, the SUS will continue to advocate but also assess the feasibility of establishing a temporary private line.
And looking even farther into the future, plans for CEP include eventual residential housing, as well as an outdoor sports complex built by (and on land still owned by) the City of Chilliwack.
