Administrators at Lambton College have begun exploring how the school could replace its aging student residence in Sarnia.
The community college has hired consultants Ernest and Young to come up with options for a new residence, along with cost estimates, in a report expected to be delivered later this year, college president Rob Kardas said.
The current residence has 140 double rooms in a former hotel at the college’s event center on London Road. That residence replaced an original student housing facility at the college’s North Building.
“We’re anticipating needing a more current residence building that is going to help address the needs of both domestic students coming from outside of Sarnia-Lambton and, obviously, our international students,” Kardas said.
“We just felt it was timely to start looking at this.”
The college’s enrollment was just less than 4,000 students in the fall, and the number of foreign students attending the school has been growing.
“It can obviously be a very complex project building any sort of student housing,” Kardas said. “There’s a lot of ways to approach it.”
Hiring Ernest and Young, a firm with experience in the field, was a “first step” to “determine what is the best way for Lambton College ”because its market and location is different than schools in other areas of the province,” Kardas said .
The college potentially could consider a new residence able to house more students, as well as serving them in different ways than the current facility does, he said.
Kardas said there are interesting examples of approaches being taken by other schools, including housing for international students that also includes space for their family, as well as some that create “learning communities in residences where students from a cluster of different programs are living in the same vicinity so they can leverage that to study together.”
The consultants are expected to use a “market analysis” to “help us determine what a more modern-day campus living experience looks like,” Kardas said.
“We know a lot of colleges have built newer buildings and obviously it’s our desire to stay competitive,” he said. “Attracting students from outside of Sarnia-Lambton is a key part of what our college does in terms of being an economic engine for the area.”
Kardas said 35 to 40 per cent of the college’s domestic student body is typically from outside of Sarnia and the rest of Lambton County.
“Having the most modern-day experience for on-campus living is critical,” he said.
Kardas said he hopes to present the results of the consultant’s work to the college board in the early fall, “and hopefully develop a cohesive recommendation going forward on how we should approach this.”
Timing for a new residence could depend on the model decided on, he said.
“Are we partnering with a third party to potentially do this, or do we determine Lambton College doing this on our own is the best way?”
Kardas said the college wants to be competitive regionally, nationally and internationally so offering “state-of-the-art facilities” is “key” to achieving that goal.
The college recently completed major capital projects that added a new wing for health programs and renewed a technology wing. It has also been updating the look of its Sarnia campus, including renovating its main entrance and college store.
“We want our students to come here and know that this is a step up from their secondary” school experience, Kardas said. “I think a residence is our next logical thing to look at,” he said.