CSU Loyola Greenhouse “Would Not be Possible”

Budget and Building Codes Cited as Main Issues

NewsVince Morello — Published May 5, 2016

There have been too many issues to proceed, including finding enough funds and gaining approval to build, according to Chloe Williams, the outgoing Loyola Coordinator for the CSU.

According to her, a greenhouse in the city of Montreal has to be designed by an architect and be state of the art.

There is also a building moratorium in the Loyola campus, which means that any new buildings have to be connected to previously existing buildings.

“In order to meet these stringent requirements we were once again looking at a multimillion dollar project, and going back to the initial steps of developing a feasibility study of the campus, and developing new potential designs,” wrote Williams in her executive report.

Also included in her report was that in order to meet the requirements, the greenhouse would turn into “a multimillion dollar project.”

“It didn’t make sense to continue pursuing it as a student project because at the end of the day, it’s going to be probably in the millions of dollars to completely finish,” said Williams. “It would make more sense to have a multi stakeholder project.”

Williams plans to work on a post-mortem evaluation of the project, which will be left with the CSU, the Concordia Food Coalition, City Farm School, the Concordia Greenhouse project and other groups that may find the information relevant.

Talk of a greenhouse at Concordia’s Loyola campus have been going on since 2013.