A waiting list of thousands of international students eager to learn in Waterloo Region has driven Conestoga College to decide to open a new downtown Kitchener campus at the former Market Square mall, at the corner of King and Frederick streets.
The college announced Friday at Kitchener City Hall that it has leased 82,000 square feet, slated to become home to 1,000 mostly business students by January of 2020.
“We think it’s a great location for us,” said Conestoga President John Tibbits, who added that he’s hopeful the footprint will grow to 200,000 square feet for more than 2,000 students “within about three years,” with additional programs beyond business, and including technology, to follow.
The expectation is that the campus will give that section of downtown a boost in terms of foot traffic and demand for services.
“This new investment will be transformational for our downtown, for our business community and for the vibrancy and diversity of our entire community,” said Kitchener Mayor Berry Vrbanovic.
Craig Haney, Vice-President, KW Portfolio for Europro, the Market Square owner, said that in 2017 the company made “a significant investment into about one million square feet of commercial real estate in downtown Kitchener.
“We saw that potential. We really just made a big bet on downtown.”
Haney said that a fast-growing local technology startup, ApplyBoard, played an important role in the college’s decision to move into Market Square. ApplyBoard, which recently located to another of Europro’s nearby downtown Kitchener properties, specializes in helping international students land placements in North American colleges and universities. Conestoga is one of those colleges.
“[ApplyBoard] is one of the reasons the college’s international student population has expanded so much,” Haney said.
“Whether it’s synergistic or by accident, it’s awesome.
“It just shows the importance of downtown Kitchener to this whole idea of multiculturalism and diversity and how it is centring on the idea of King East and this area.
“To me, what makes the downtown vibrant and exciting beyond 9-to-5 workers is the idea that you can live, work, play and learn all in the same area.”
Tibbits said that international students have become core to Conestoga’s success and growth, adding it now is “a magnet for international students from all over the world.
“We have a backlog of thousands of students who want to come and we don’t have the space,” he said, adding that the college now has students from 80 countries and has full-time recruiting staff in China and India.
“Seventy-seven per cent of Ontario businesses describe access to talent as their greatest obstacle to growth. We know for a fact that in this community there are thousands of jobs that have gone unfilled. In Canada alone there are 400,000 jobs that are not being filled because we don’t have the people.
“High school enrolments,” he said, “have dropped in Ontario in the last 20 years by 40 per cent and in this region, by 25 [per cent].”
Training talent, serving as a source of talent, he said, is Conestoga’s core mission.
The Market Square lease, Tibbits said, is for 10 years and worth “$20 million to $30 million.”
Conestoga has 50,000 students in total, 17,000 of them full-time. Vrbanovic said the school and its various campuses contribute $2.3 billion to the region’s economy each year.
