Carleton’s Board of Governors (BoG) approved a motion on Dec. 5, to begin negotiations for the purchase of the Dominion-Chalmers United Church.
The site, which takes up 37,000 square feet at the corner of Cooper Street and O’Connor Street, would be used as a performance and rehearsal space for music students, and to expand program options within the faculty of arts and social sciences. There has also been interest from architecture and drama students, as well as the Carleton University Art Gallery (CUAG), Alastair Summerlee, Carleton’s interim president said.
The space will also be used to address growing concerns for the lack of program facilities for students in these programs. The project would not only provide new spaces for students, but free up space on campus.
“We are absolutely stretched beyond capacity with our own rooms,” Summerlee said.
The project was proposed early in the year, and since then there has been a large amount of investigation into the costs, risks, and the conditions of the building.
Summerlee also said the space would be useful to establish and strengthen links to the community.
“As we all know, community roots are important to Carleton, and there is a huge potential for us to expand that by being engaged in the downtown activity,” he said. “By having community groups involved in activities where we have students rubbing shoulders with them, it gives us opportunities for students to be part of that activity, which is part of experiential learning for them.”
The church is currently being used by other groups, and is often used as a performance venue in the Centretown area.
At the meeting, board members raised some objections about the project, questioning the use of a religious space by a secular university, the location of the site relative to the Carleton campus, transportation between the site and Carleton, and the cost of renovations.
Another issue raised was the notion of non-Christian students using a consecrated site. According to Summerlee, there haven’t been any student objections up until now, however the school is prepared to handle these situations sensitively and “with grace” should the need come up.
One of the more vocal objectors on the Board was Ian Lee, a business professor who teaches strategic management at Carleton.
Lee called the proposed acquisition a “strategic disaster of biblical proportions.”
“To use a more modern analogy, we, the members of the Board of Governors are on the Titanic and we’re heading directly for the iceberg,” he said.
Lee’s concerns were centred around a possible financial crisis surrounding renovation costs and negative reception for the project from minority students objecting to the use of a religious space.
He also questioned why the Centretown location was the “optimal, first-choice solution” for more space, and expressed his belief that Carleton should look into cheaper rental options to address space concerns.
“I challenge any person in this room or any person in Canada to provide an example of any university in Canada that went through a strategic analysis of its space requirements for future expansion that then identified as its first choice a 100-year-old failing church with millions of dollars in structural deficiencies far away from the campus,” Lee said.
Michel Piché, Carleton vice-president (finance and administration), disputed the idea of the building being in poor shape in a press release. According to the release, the intention would be to preserve the exterior, and renovate the interior to meet the needs of students.
The release also states that funds for the project have been raised by private and external sources, and there has been extensive consultation with the City of Ottawa and the church congregation as part of the project.
Photo by Aaron Hemens
