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e-mail: snoble@mtroyal.ca
Fred Cheney
Media Relations Officer
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e-mail: fcheney@mtroyal.ca
Olympic Plaza. The Olympic Oval. Canada Olympic Park, and the Saddledome — each is a legacy of the 1988 Olympic Winter Games, when 1,423 athletes from more than 50 countries drew the world's attention to Calgary.
But Mount Royal University is the proud home of another, lesser-known Olympic legacy: East Residence. Each townhouse in that complex is built of prefabricated units that were part of the Lincoln Park Media Village during those exciting days 22 years ago.
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Mount Royal Court Community Centre was the heart of the Media Village at the 1988 Winter Olympics here in Calgary. |
“Up to that point, we didn’t have accommodation for students on campus and it was hard to find places to stay in Calgary,” says Steve Foster, who has been Mount Royal’s Director of Physical Resources since 1986.
“Because the Alberta government wanted to find a home for the media village units after the Olympics, they offered them to us, and we were glad to get them,” Foster says.
The Lincoln Park Media Village stood where WestMount Corporate Campus is today.
The village was made up of 500 housing units supplied by Calgary’s ATCO Industries.
“We knew ahead of time that we would be getting 37 of these units, so we developed some minimum specifications to which they were built,” Foster remembers.
“We did things like increase the thickness of the plywood and ask for high quality shingle on the roof.
“We actually went over to their factory two or three times and inspected them as they were being built.”
At its height, the village housed more than 2,000 print journalists from around the world, who each paid $65 US a night for their accommodations.
More than just neighbours
And they weren’t merely neighbours during the Olympics. Mount Royal College signed an agreement with Calgary’s Olympic Organizing Committee to provide food services to the media.
The BookStore expanded its hours during the Olympics, and brought in newspapers from 15 countries during the span of the Games. As well, journalists were given exclusive use of the pool and gym during certain hours.
Foster was on campus during the Games, and remembers it as an exciting time.
“Everybody was enthusiastic and there were a lot of volunteers,” he says. “People were really anxious to get involved.”
Making use of the infrastructure
At the close of the Games, Mount Royal began work on the $12 million student residence complex that would be the new home for 37 of the media village units.
Funded by Alberta’s Department of Advanced Education, the project focused on an 18-acre site owned by the Alberta Mortgage and Housing Corporation. They both transferred ownership of the units and the land to Mount Royal.
To prepare the site, Mount Royal built a road, sidewalks and parking lots for the new residential complex. And, as they were pouring the foundations for the 37 townhouses ranging between one and four bedrooms in size, Foster says they also uncovered some surprises.
“Where the East Residence is now used to be a big runway — this was once a military air force base,” he explains.
“When we developed the site, we took out the runway and there was all this beautiful gravel underneath. When we were getting ready to put in the deep services, we found another runway 18 inches down.
“We had to take that out as well.”
Once the foundations were ready, the modular units were moved across Richard Road to their new location, where they were re-erected using cranes to stack as many as eight modules into townhouse configurations.
The final step
The final step involved removing the original siding from the units and replacing it with stucco. Although the idea was to make the new residences blend in with existing college buildings, initial plans showed the townhouses in a wide range of colours, quickly earning East Residence the nickname Smurf Village from neighbourhood groups who were consulted on the plans.
Those plans were just as quickly revised and the units were painted their current, more subtle, colour.
As so often happens, the renovations ended up taking longer than expected. By the fall of 1989, the work was done and approximately 435 students moved into their new digs, occupying both a place on campus and a place in history.
— Nancy Cope, Feb. 11, 2010
Calgary, Alberta, Canada T3E 6K6
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