FEBRUARY 2024: Campus development scenarios
Mandate Objectives Approach & phases Activities Results
Concordia's Campus Master Plan is intended as a decision-making tool for planning the real estate development of the Loyola and Sir George Williams campuses over a 15-year time frame.
The university anticipates a space deficit of 115,000 square metres within 10 years.1 Meeting this demand will involve large-scale development projects on both campuses, addressing various urban, planning and regulatory contexts with unique challenges.
The overall vision reflects a sensitive planning approach to campus heritage and identity and to Concordia’s educational legacy. The plan must take a historical perspective in the development of the campuses and the surrounding urban environments in which they take shape.
1. Estimation based on forecasts of additional student enrolment (500 FTES/year) and calculated according to the current MES admissible space standard
In summary, the objectives of the plan are as follows:
The recommended approach for implementing the Campus Master Plan is part of a strategic, concerted and integrated process with the City of Montreal’s regulatory and planning mechanisms.
Close collaboration with the city was established at the outset of the project to align Concordia’s strategy and policies with those of Montreal regarding development projects, planning initiatives and regulations. In addition, a consultation and communication process will support the Campus Master Plan at every stage to ensure a collective vision consistent with the ambitions of the Concordia community is formulated.
The plan's development process has four main phases, the third of which has just been completed:
(August 2020 to March 2021)
(March to August 2021)
(August 2021 to February 2024)
In collaboration with the City of Montreal and the Ville-Marie Borough, the work explored various development and densification options for the Sir George Williams Campus.
Following these discussions, Concordia and the City of Montreal agreed not to pursue the campus’ development through a regulatory framework stemming from the master plan. Instead, the preferred approach will assess individual projects based on heritage, the quality of replacement projects and other factors.
Concordia will create a master plan for the Sir George Williams Campus that does not rely on the development of a management framework with the city.
2. IDP: Integrated Design Process
The approach calls for constant and productive collaboration between both internal and external partners affected by the project and draws on best consulting practices to promote social acceptability by the partners and their endorsement of the plan.
Phase 3 of the Concordia Campus Master Plan defined a scenario for the Loyola Campus through an exploratory process that consisted of various consultation activities with project partners.
The exploratory approach evaluated options for future development zones on the Loyola Campus.
The scenario for discussion — the synthesis of this process — was then presented to the city and borough (IDP 4). After incorporating the city and borough working group’s comments, a preferred scenario (IDP 5) was drawn up, serving as the basis for the master plan scenario.
The master plan scenario develops guidelines and actions that will enable the sustainable development of the Loyola Campus according to the following themes:
The general planning criteria also provided qualitative guidelines, which ensured how well the various projects would integrate with the existing built and landscape heritage. These criteria were also designed to meet guiding principles and filters identified in phase 2:
Implementing the master plan will enable the university to express its orientations in a concrete manner.
To this end, follow-up committees should be set up to guide future project partners in how to use the master plan, to monitor progress in the implementation of the plan and its peripheral studies and to identify any obstacles to its application. This follow-up committee will periodically revise the document to keep it up to date. The committee will also promote the tool within the university community to ensure all those involved remain committed to its implementation and financing.
master.plan@concordia.ca 514-848-2424, ext. 2400
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