The University of Alberta plans to establish a land trust as part of a strategy to find long-term sources of revenue to support academic and research priorities.
The board of governors unanimously approved the proposal in June. Ralph Young, '73 MBA, university chancellor and member of the university's Land Asset Advisory Task Force, says it was one of the most important decisions the board has had to make.
In a land trust arrangement, a trustee is appointed to manage property for the benefit of one or more other parties. In this case, the U of A will be a beneficiary of the trust.
The university's 50-year Long Range Development Plan will inform how the U of A trust would enter into long-term lease agreements to develop portions of the land, says Don Hickey, '71 BSc(ElecEng), vice-president of facilities and operations. While the university would create the trust, he says, the trustee would operate independently.
Designating which lands will make up the trust is still on the horizon. Several issues - including academic research needs and municipal planning requirements - will continue to be discussed. A next step toward establishing the land trust is to take a recommended governance structure back to the U of A board in the fall. An order-in-council establishing the corporation that will act as trustee is also required by government.
Other institutions across North America have embraced a similar land asset management strategy. The University of British Columbia land trust has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in value for the institution since it was created in the late '80s. Similar concepts have been adopted by Simon Fraser University and, most recently, by the University of Calgary and Keyano College in Alberta.
No decision has been made as to which lands will be designated for the U of A trust, although media reports have sparked speculation about South Campus lands. Community leaders in neighbourhoods around South Campus, reacting to the reports, told the Edmonton Journal they would like to see a co-ordinated approach to development that respects the city's planning process and principles. "There is opportunity and there is risk, and the devil is in the details," Cory Doll, '98 BSc(EnvSci), president of the Malmo Plains community league was quoted as saying. An Edmonton Journal editorial May 27 noted "it's crucial for Edmonton that the U of A remain financially healthy" and recommended a "serious, citywide discussion" about long-term development plans.
The university will continue to communicate with the community at large in the coming months, says Debra Pozega Osburn, vice-president of university relations.
"Communications around this initiative actually ramp up with this approval," she says. "This is just the start of many discussions we would have within our various communities and with our various stakeholder groups about this initiative."
President Indira Samarasekera, who was on faculty with UBC in the late 1980s when it created a land trust, says the U of A trust will provide ongoing discretionary funding that will allow the university to chart its own destiny.
"Some of our struggles have been that we just don't have surplus financial capacity to undertake the kinds of initiatives that would drive our vision," she says, referring to UBC's ability to take on projects that the government wouldn't normally support. "It gives the university much greater capacity to chart a direction based on the collective vision of where the university needs to go and how it needs to get there."
We at New Trail welcome your comments. Robust debate and criticism are encouraged, provided it is respectful. We reserve the right to reject comments, images or links that attack ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender or sexual orientation; that include offensive language, threats, spam; are fraudulent or defamatory; infringe on copyright or trademarks; and that just generally aren’t very nice. Discussion is monitored and violation of these guidelines will result in comments being disabled.