Rotary hears Red River College's moving plans

By Jamie Fischer 

March 16, 2011

The Rotary Club's March 15 meeting had a special guest speaker. Lori Grenkow, manager of Red River College's Portage campus, gave a presentation on the college in general as well as its plans to move to Victoria School.

Ken Keith, one of the rotary members responsible for bringing in Grenkow, explained why presentation was relevant to rotary members. "Education is a real key to infrastructure in the community," Keith said, "It's very important what Red River College is doing."

Rotary members come from different sectors of the Portage economy, but all of them have one need in common: good employees. "There many members in rotary in business looking for skilled people," Keith said, adding that this is precisely what Red River College provides.

The Portage campus of Red River College has 109 full-time students, 58 per cent of which are sponsored, and approximately 800 part time students. The school is expanding, and that was one of the reasons the college decided to take its campus to Victoria School.

However, this was not the only reason for the move. "We were running out of space in Southport," Grenkow said,"But one of the biggest issues we're finding is that students were having trouble with transportation." While the distance from Portage to Southport isn't much, for anyone without a vehicle it can mean a cab ride every day.

The final reason for the move is visibility for the school. "Southport has been wonderful as a landlord for us, but our visibility is very minor there," Grenkow said. "We need to upfront and center in a community and Victoria School gives us that."

Red River College will be accepting tenders for their contracting work until March 17, and construction is set to begin around mid-April. Victoria School doesn't need any major changes to accommodate the college, but there will be general improvements for safety reasons and electrical upgrades.

The playground on the school grounds will remain there if it's deemed to be in safe condition. The school is also considering relocating it and adding some extra fencing.

While Grenkow said she'd like to see a day care included in the building, she said it isn't part of the plans. "We know that day care staff shortages are a real problem, as are day care spaces," she said. "So if we can help address that priority by having a daycare that would be great. But the college doesn't normally run day cares, it would have to be a stand alone business."

Construction will focus on the main floor first so the college can move their offices into their new building. By summer work on the classrooms will begin. Red River College's Fall classes start in mid-September and are set to be in the new building.

See article here.