By Glenn Hicks

Hopes for revitalization with new U of S campus for P.A.

Mar 9, 2018 | 1:00 PM

Prince Albert’s Downtown Improvement District thinks a new University of Saskatchewan (U of S) campus in the city will spur renewal and a surge of younger people with fresh business ideas.

The organization was responding to Thursday’s announcement that the university has purchased the Forestry Centre building on Central Avenue opposite city hall and will renovate it to accommodate the hundreds of students and staff currently spread across various sites in the city.

“We [already had] entrepreneurs walking in asking about properties to rent downtown,” executive director Rick Orr told paNOW. “Now with this announcement we’re going to see young people thinking about how they might invest in an enterprise in the downtown area.

Orr said the plans to open the multi-program campus by late 2020 was a boon for hopes of giving the downtown new life. The university is confident the large campus, with space for extra programming, will bring more students than the 324 already enrolled in classes in Prince Albert.

“It speaks to revitalization of the downtown and it’s going to allow amazing opportunities for entrepreneurs to set up ancillary businesses to serve all those students and staff’” he said.

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Orr was hopeful city council would now accelerate plans for planning and public consultation on a new streetscape design for Central Avenue. He added now was the time for property owners to spruce up their buildings and make them more viable for entrepreneurs to come and lease them and set up businesses.

Meanwhile the P.A. and District Chamber of Commerce is calling the news of the campus exciting and positive.

“Any time a centre of higher learning comes to a community it always has positive spin-offs and effects on businesses at large,” C.E.O. Kelvin Pankiw said. “Revitalization can help not only the academic business sector but all sectors; a rising tide helps all ships.”

Pankiw noted the U of S has already committed to bringing dentistry programming as an extra area of study to the campus in addition to their arts and science, nursing and medicine offerings. He said in time the chamber would like to see other areas of education that have appeal and resonance for the business community in the North.

“That could be disciplines including mining, forestry and environmental,” he said.

glenn.hicks@jpbg.ca

On Twitter:@princealbertnow