CREDIT: SAMANTHA KACZALA
Leaders of patron organizations hammer plaques into one of the wooden joists that will be put up in Fanshawe's new downtown campus.

Fanshawe representatives and community members held a press conference in the Good Foundation Theatre of the downtown campus, the Centre for Digital and Performance Arts (CDPA), to discuss updates on the progress of the construction of the new downtown London campus, on June 9.

Construction on the historic Kingsmill’s department store for Fanshawe’s newest campus started in Jan. 2016, according to Peter Gilbert, Fanshawe’s chief infrastructure officer.

The project is currently under the name of downtown London phase II or simply phase II for short.

When completed, the building will house roughly 1,600 students from the School of Information Technology and School of Hospitality and Tourism.

Fanshawe will be providing the students with the latest technology and facilities to use, while also boasting a large amount of space for students to be able to socialize.

Some of the building’s features will be a teaching restaurant with a sidewalk café, a deli shop, a retail store and a passage connecting Carling and Dundas Street for pedestrians to use.

Gilbert announced, the building’s construction is running smoothly, remaining on time for phase II’s slated completion date of Sept. 2018.

Gilbert also informed attendees what’s been happening with the construction of the building and that when the building is complete, pedestrians and students will see a lot of sustainability and environmentally friendly features such as fritted glass windows and a large amount of student lounging space.

Fanshawe president Peter Devlin, said there are many aspects that will be in the new campus which students can look forward to.

“It will be because of the modern, vibrant, alive space. Whether it be the classroom, whether it be the lab, whether it be the coming learning spaces, the hangout spaces or the downtown core, I think all those reasons is why it will be very exciting for a Fanshawe college student to study here [downtown campus] at Fanshawe.”

With the construction costing a total of $66.2 million, Devlin is as excited as the students to see the campus come together as the “largest single capital investment Fanshawe College has ever made”.

“It’s special. It’s going to be an imaginative space for Fanshawe College students to learn and grow,” Devlin said.

Devlin had positive words when asked why Fanshawe chose to place the information technology and hospitality and tourism programs into the phase II campus.

“The driving force was the industry partnerships in the downtown core for those two schools. So the IT school and the Tourism and Hospitality schools in the downtown core [bring a] stronger more vibrant relationship with the industries that those two support,” Devlin said.

According to David Belford, Dean of Faculty of Business, the move to downtown will also give students an opportunity to gain better work opportunities.

“Just being here [downtown] they [teachers] see lots of opportunities for our students to actually see the business themselves. So it’s not just talking about it in the classroom. They can go visit hotels. They can visit restaurants. Then we can have lots of guest speakers in. There is going to be a lot of interaction with the actual employers. I think that that kind of thing is what students are looking for. They want to know what is really going on,” Belford said.

The event also allowed the attendees to ‘leave their mark’, giving them the opportunity to sign two out of the 45 wooden joists salvaged from the old Kingsmill structure, which are going to be used as decorative features in the new campus when it’s completed.

Attendees sign their names on one of the wooden joists to ‘leave their mark’ CREDIT: SAMANTHA KACZALA