![[University of Waterloo]](/goldbar.gif)
| Yesterday |
Thursday, August 14, 2003
|
Editor: Chris Redmond credmond@uwaterloo.ca |
![[Lurid fall colours]](/images/2003/0814ncampus.gif)
A stylized fall scene beside Laurel Creek in what will be UW's "environmental reserve" |
During the tour we saw a number of construction workers -- some driving heavy machinery, others with clipboards -- as well as a hydro crew, parents and kids at the two north campus day care centres, a shirtless jogger on the Laurel Trail, a flock of seagulls, a fair number of geese, and a fat groundhog.
The main entrance to the north campus is Hagey Boulevard, now a city street. Its beginning at Columbia Street is marked by five tall metal "entrance arches" and landscaping that's about to be finished. Ahead on the left is the Columbia Icefield and the attached gymnasium -- currently a construction site as a major addition to UW's athletic facilities is completed in time for September.
Hagey Boulevard begins four lanes wide but narrows at a small traffic circle where a side road, still nameless, heads off westward to the Brubacher House and the day care centres, eastward to a future entrance to parking lot X.
Facing the road at that point is the future site of an "accelerator centre" that will house fledgling businesses and the services that may help them grow. "That'll probably be the next building," said Galloway, noting that a request for proposals is just now being sent out. (Construction of the research park as a whole is likely to extend for as long as eight years, he predicts.)
Space is marked out beside the cross road for an asphalt-surfaced trail that will some day, it's hoped, be the route of the Trans-Canada Trail. At present the Trans-Canada runs along the shabby Bauer Warehouse road on the east side of the north campus, a road that will be closed to traffic -- but remain as a branch trail -- when all the work is completed.
He stopped to point out the benches that will give visitors a view not just of the great circle but of a broad sloping park that will stretch southwest towards Columbia Lake. About half a kilometre of jogging or blading trail will be installed in the park this year, with another half-kilometre planned when the rest of the park is developed later.
From the great circle, a short road leads to a "dead end" sign, but that's temporary -- fire hydrants, red dots in a sea of brown, show where the new road, curving northward, will pass the Bauer Warehouse and meet up with Parkside Drive at the corner of Bearinger Road.
I glanced southward toward the main campus, seeing a view dominated by the Optometry building. To the northwest, Galloway was showing me the beginnings of construction on the first R&T Park building, for software developer Sybase Inc. Work has just started, but the building's footprint is identifiable.
Sybase is at the corner of the future east-west Wes Graham Drive, named in honour of UW's computing pioneer. It's just a stub so far, but we could catch a glimpse of a huge stormwater management pond that will be a feature of the triangular park, as well as a berm area shaped like an "amphitheatre" that will some day be a site for picnics and outdoor celebrations.
Hagey Boulevard currently stops just beyond the great circle, "but it's rough-graded up to Bearinger," Galloway told me, and proved it by driving its bumpy length, past a field of rapidly ripening corn. (Unneeded land on the north campus has been leased to farmers for forty years; a machine had just finished bringing in hay from another field that we passed further west.)
We drove from the future Hagey Boulevard intersection along Bearinger Road to the corner of Parkside Drive, which the city of Waterloo will be rebuilding ("it's currently in environmental assessment") so it lines up with the new road onto the north campus, also to be called Parkside. That'll be a major intersection, with traffic lights needed in a year or two, Galloway said.
Galloway told me yesterday that UW has just received the fat report of an environmental assessment of this precious strip of land, done for the university by the consulting firm of CH2M Hill. It talks about everything from moving the route of the Laurel Trail, to protect environmentally sensitive areas, to places where vegetation should be replaced with something native and more likely to thrive.
But the biggest question has been what to do with Columbia Lake, whose broad, shallow expanse currently allows the water to heat up in summer, posing a threat to plants and fish living downstream in Laurel Creek. The choice among various options, Galloway said, is to change the shoreline of the lake somewhat (it's already artificial), reduce its size by about 20 per cent, and build a "bypass channel" so more cold water makes it into the creek and eventually into the Grand River.
"It will be dredged, which it desperately needs, and it'll be deeper," Galloway said. He added, however, that the recommendation has just been received, and still has to be reviewed by UW committees, the university's board of governors, and Waterloo city council before plans become definite.
We headed south along the Laurel Trail, largely between stands of trees with an occasional glimpse of the creek, emerging suddenly to an unexpected view of the lake with Mackenzie King Village above it. "The environmental reserve is likely to be more of a longer-term project," Galloway warned, saying that while there's some funding available now -- from the SuperBuild money that's also paying for infrastructure in the R&T Park -- much more will be needed.
From Columbia Street we turned up another dirt road, this one the southern end of the future Westmount Road. Passing the existing Columbia Lake Townhouses, we got a look at the new graduate student townhouse development, with the first of this year's 100 houses standing shrill in pink insulation. (There will be 300 houses eventually.) They'll have an entrance from the new Westmount Road, but the main entrance will continue to be through the existing townhouse development off Columbia Street.
Just north of the townhouses we got a glimpse of Waterloo North Hydro's new substation, which faces Fischer-Hallman Road and will provide high-voltage power to all of the north campus. Except in the R&T Park area itself, the wires will be carried on poles: "It's prohibitively expensive to go underground," Galloway noted.
A final stop was at "the most valuable land the university owns", an area at the corner of Columbia and Fischer-Hallman that's currently in use for sports fields. There are no plans to sell or develop that land, Galloway said; UW will continue to hold it for the day, or the decade, when it's needed.
It was quite a tour.
The site also looks ahead to September, with the note that "All of our residences facilities are full for the fall term. It's not too early to start thinking about the winter or spring. Visit our website for more information." Fall term classes will start September 8, with orientation activities beginning on Labour Day, September 1.
Tuition fees are due September 3 (if they're made by bank payment; any payments by cheque are due earlier, on August 25). Most people will be paying by phone, by Internet, by mail or at banks, but it's worth mentioning that anybody needing face-by-face contact will deal with the "student accounts" office -- the former "cashiers' office" in Needles Hall room 1110 recently changed its name.
For the next few days, between terms, the UW libraries will be open for reduced hours. Tonight, closing time is 11:00 in the Dana Porter Library and midnight in the Davis Centre, but then for the next three weeks, building hours are 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Friday, noon to 6 p.m. on weekends. Circulation service is promised from noon to 6 p.m. this weekend, but there won't be circulation service the following two weekends.
The library notes that an upgrade to the Trellis computer system means that only a backup catalogue will be available this weekend, from 6 p.m. Friday until noon on Monday.
UW food services outlets are also reducing service. The Village I cafeteria (Mudie's) is closed now, as is the Modern Languages coffee shop. Tim Horton's in ML will be open tomorrow, but that's it for August. In fact the only cafeterias still in business, until after Labour Day, will be Pastry Plus in Needles Hall, Brubakers in the Student Life Centre (but it'll be closing at 3:30), Browsers in the Dana Porter Library, Bookends in South Campus Hall, and Tim Horton's in the Davis Centre (plus the Jolly Chef next door to it, at lunchtime only). And not one of those places will be open weekends.
The department of applied mathematics is holding a Students' Research Conference today in Math and Computer room 5158, showing off graduate student work under titles like "Particle Interactions with Matter" and "Long-Term Minimization of Total Tumor Burden". A "best speaker" prize will be awarded at the end of the day.
Finally, yes, there was a Positions Available list from the human resources department yesterday; I just didn't get it in time to include it in the Daily Bulletin on the usual Wednesday date. The list is available on the HR web site.
CAR