The University of Waterloo has added five additional buildings to its campus following a $41-million real estate partnership with BlackBerry.
The purchase adds 300,000 square feet to the campus and over 1,000 new parking spaces.
The university was first approached by the company about the buildings early on in the school year, according to Tim Jackson, vice-president (university relations) at Waterloo.
But Jackson said this wasn’t the first means of communication made between the two establishments.
“We’ve had a longstanding relationship with BlackBerry,” he said. “Buildings have been used back and forth in the past.”
Jackson said the newly-acquired buildings, located at the corner of Columbia and Phillip Street, are a great investment because of their proximity to the university.
“They are essentially buildings that are on our main campus,” he said. “They actually complete the north east corner of campus.”
Jackson said the new buildings will help to alleviate growing space concerns made by an increase of Waterloo students and faculty in the past decade.
The purchase is also ideal for the university, he said, since there will be no time spent waiting on construction. This means that, following the finalization of the deal on Feb. 14, three of the buildings will be able to be of immediate use.
However, the remaining two will be leased out to BlackBerry for a total of up to five years.
The deal does not only benefit the university, but will also help to achieve BlackBerry’s own plans.
According to a statement from the company, the deal will help them to reach their goal of reducing about 50 per cent of their operating expenditures, a step they hope to reach by the end of the first quarter of fiscal 2015.
The company will be continuing to consider real estate options for their Canadian properties, the statement concluded.
Currently, Waterloo is in the midst of evaluating its new buildings for move-in.
“Right now [we’re] going through IT infrastructure and identifying the changes,” Jackson said. “Putting them on the university’s network and making sure they have wireless internet.”
Jackson said they are also determining which departments would best suit the new buildings.
Whether administrative operations or classes will take place in them is also to be decided.
