Ted Avery

The Genosha hotel in downtown Oshawa has been sold to become a student residence. There will be 103 student residence units on the upper floors and commercial space on the ground level. The entire hotel is to be renovated over the next 10 months and plan to be available for moving in at the beginning of the 2010 school year. More details here.

This makes sense as the Faculty of Education is currently downtown, and the school plans to move the Faculty of Business downtown in the future (to which there is a Facebook group “protest” against). The relocation was briefly mentioned in the UOIT Master Plan, but with very few details.

But who needs details when you love to complain, right? Regardless, we are all entitled to our opinions, and I choose to take the initial stance of optimism. A lot of people are concerned about parking issues, one-way streets, and a generally unattractive downtown. But if UOIT has spent all this time and money on creating such a great plan for the main campus, does the idea of them leaving the downtown campus as an afterthought make any sense? Considering it will be home to the Business Faculty, one of the largest, if not the largest, faculties on campus, I expect the downtown campus to get the same thorough treatment that the main campus has.

Not only will the downtown campus receive attention from the school, but also businesses. Downtown Oshawa can become a happening place when the right parties become involved (as proven by the success of Isabella’s Chocolate Cafe) and with high student traffic, downtown Oshawa will continue to grow in great ways. One of the things I miss most from attending Ryerson University was the sense that I was in a miniature city of students, but in reality, the school only owns a handful of buildings which are scattered amongst existing businesses in downtown Toronto. Many of these businesses thrived off the student population, like the Thai cuisine I would visit frequently with friends. There were plenty of places to hang out when at school, and I envision the same thing happening in downtown Oshawa with growth driven by an increasing student population. Currently my entire university experience takes place in about 2 or 3 buildings standing next to each other on a campus completely cut off from the rest of society — hardly the campus atmosphere that other universities experience.

So that’s my take on the issue. In the end, any opinion at this point is highly speculative. UOIT hasn’t revealed exactly how much of a focus they are going to have on the downtown campus. In fact, all the speculation is based on a few bullet points in a presentation. Nonetheless, it’s an interesting discussion, so here is a glass-half-full opinion.