TRU Students' Union hopes to take steps toward new building sometime in April

Photo: Josh Dawson

The Thompson Rivers University Students’ Union says it is requesting a development agreement with the university to build a new building in "the heart of campus."

Nathan Lane, TRUSU's executive director, said the agreement would mean TRU would hold a parcel of land aside for the students' union, on which the new building would rise.

“We're trying to basically have a memo of understanding to say they won’t develop another building on this space within a timeline so that we could then go to our members and propose a design process,” Lane said.

“That could be literally 10 or 15 years away, or it could be five years away depending on the size and scale of the building.”

Lane said the students' union has been in talks with TRU as the university revitalizes its campus master plan. He said several locations for the proposed building have been identified that would be more central and closer “to the heart of campus” than TRUSU's current digs in the Campus Activity Centre.

He said his hope is to have an agreement in place by the end of April.

“We could move to the next phase, which is to propose a new building, and then to have some conversations about what amenities it would have and how it will be different from this building,” Lane said.

At the student unions annual general meeting in January, the student union said its existing building in the campus activity centre has been paid off and TRUSU has now begun saving money for the construction of a new one.

The union’s total assets as of last summer were valued at $7.7 million, including the Common Grounds coffee shop in the TRUSU building on campus.