Farewell to Mackay St.’s R-R Annex

Faculty members and students of the Liberal Arts College grapple with the move out of their historic building

News Nathalie Bucur — Published September 8, 2026 5 minutes

Unfortunately, students coming into the Fall 2026 semester will not be able to experience the annex. Most of the Liberal Arts program will be relocated to the 10th floor of the J.W. McConnell (LB) Building. 

Jarrett Carty, the principal of the Liberal Arts College, was the first to be made aware of this change. He believes that the university had intended this move for years, but decided to do it recently.

“We’ve known for years that there’s been an intention to move a lot of university use of those buildings out, but there was never a 'this is when this is going to happen,'” Carty said. 

Last year, it became a serious decision to consider. 

“It was a little over a year ago that it became ‘this is going to have to be soon,’” Carty said. “There’s a negotiation about how soon you want to do that, and with the upcoming academic year, I’ve recommended at least during the following summer.” 

Carty then officially announced this decision to the rest of the college during the Fall 2025 semester’s orientation meeting.

The reasoning behind the relocation was not given, but Carty believes that it was due to costly renovations and a shrinking budget for a 150-year-old townhouse.

“You can’t renovate them without spending a giant pile of money, far more per square foot than if you just renovated part of the Hall building,” Carty said. “With many crises and lack of funding for renovations, the university looks at those buildings and sees a giant liability.”  

Carty said the Liberal Arts faculty’s top priority is maintaining student spaces, such as the lounge. Whilst classrooms and faculty offices were important, he deemed it necessary to guarantee space for a new lounge.

“For me, the number one and number two orders of priority have always been the lounge and the library, then the classrooms and then the faculty offices,” Carty said. “The real core of our space is our dedicated student space.”

For students, this decision from Concordia was met with an initial shock. 

“It’s tough to not associate the location with the community,” Eli White said, the Arts and Science Federation of Associations coordinator for the college.

Aside from Carty’s announcements, no official statements were given by the university. 

“Nobody really knew what was going on. It was a stressful cloud of confusion for a long time,” Aurora Dyck said, the internal and sustainability coordinator for the Liberal Arts Society (LAS).

As for the student lounge, the old space would be inaccessible after the move.

“Coming into Liberal Arts, it has been one of the most important spaces for the college. Classes are great [for getting] to know your students, but the lounge had a microwave, and the library space was right next to it. Everything was in that space,” Isabelle Ede said, the general coordinator for the LAS.

The lounge was the raison d’être for many students in the program, including for Ede. 

“When I was applying to the program two years ago to enroll, the lounge was a big selling point,” Ede said.

Despite these uncertainties, the student body and the program coordinators are determined to stay positive. 

“I’m choosing to position myself as an optimist and see that the move can be positive,” Ede said.

The new lounge in the LB building comes with restrictions on its general appearance and layout, whereas the older location had been repainted and remodelled by a student. 

“As I am trying to figure out how to handle the new lounge, the physical restrictions are my biggest challenge. I want people to still feel comfortable in the new room, and still feel like it’s theirs,” Nazar Aktas said, the LAS lounge curator.

However, Aktas explained that whilst the physical space is important, student initiatives were the lounge’s most important aspect. 

“We’re trying to make a busy and full schedule for this upcoming school year. We have a coffee hour event that we do every second Thursday that we are going to do every week this year,” Atkas said. 

While the RR Annex fostered a thriving student community, the building ran into numerous structural accessibility issues.

“Although the space was very vital, I also acknowledge that the space we were in was not accessible, so it did not make it fair for students who had accessibility issues,” said Julia Saunders, the social coordinator for the LAS. “I wish we could add an elevator in and call it a day, but Concordia doesn’t have the budget for that, so I understand why the move has to happen.”

The RR Annex was also equipped with lead pipes, so all drinking water had to come from coolers. When those coolers were removed, White underwent a lengthy process with the university to have them reinstated.

“I went on a crusade by emailing as many people as I could, and we did get our coolers back,” White said.

Whilst the move can be inconvenient for the college, students and faculty have adopted a cautious optimism towards it. 

“I was very upset at the start, but I think that it’s very exciting to be part of this new chapter of the Liberal Arts College,” Saunders said. 

Carty remains optimistic and believes that the future of the new space now rests in the hands of the students themselves. 

“They have the power to make it work, and I am going to support that 100 per cent,” Carty said. 

This article originally appeared in Volume 47, Issue 1, published September 8, 2026.