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Board of Control Considers Downtown College Campus Plan

The City is teaming up with Fanshawe College to turn empty and under-used buildings in the downtown core into works of art.

Board of Control will debate the proposed plan tomorrow to convert heritage buildings near the corner of Richmond and Dundas into a new campus for the College's applied and performance arts programs.

The 10 year program would cost $10-million dollars in city subsidies and would be the last major investment aimed at revitalizing the downtown core.

Fanshawe will be announcing details of the plan soon, including how they plan to buy and renovate several 'hertiage type buildings' in the area to create a 'district concept' campus for about a thousand students.

Officials from the College say they have no room to expand at the main campus on Oxford, so they need to look elsewhere.

Their threatre arts program is already downtown but their lease at the CitiPlaza is up in 5 years and they want to expand even more.

For their part, the City hopes to turn the proposed downtown campus into a tourist destination and use the space on nights and weekends for youth-focused arts competitions.

To help pay for renovating the older buildings -- which costs more than building new ones -- City staff could recommend a grant of $100 a square foot, but Fanshawe still needs funding from the Ministry of Colleges and Universities and the Federal government.

This would be City Hall's last in a long list of initiatives centred in the core which started in 1995 and included building the John Labatt Centre.