Terrace roof to undergo $155,000 repairs

File photo by Nick Lachance.

The Wilfrid Laurier University Students’ Union will be spending $155,000 to repair the roof of the Terrace Food Court. The decision was approved unanimously at an emergency board meeting Tuesday night.

WLUSU was already in the process of repairs to the grill hood at the Harvey’s outlet in the food court, and decided to move forward with the additional roof repairs in an effort to save construction cost.

“It’s deferred maintenance, we’ve sort of been putting it off, and putting it off, and it’s something we want to get to this year,” said interim general manager Chris Hyde. “We’re going to be fixing the grill hood at Harvey’s and it’s proposed we fix the roof while were up there.”

According to Hyde and WLUSU president Michael Onabolu, doing the roof repairs at the same time as the maintenance to Harvey’s will save about $15,000 compared to the cost of doing the jobs separately.

In June of last year, WLUSU handed over operation of the Terrace — which was closed twice this past school year, once due to flooding and once due to the discovery of mould as a result of the flooding — to Aramark, the same company that operates Laurier’s Dining Hall. However, under the terms of the deal between the Students’ Union and Aramark, WLUSU is still on the hook to cover repairs and maintenance to the buidling.

According to Hyde, the roof has been an issue for a number of years with multiple temporary fixes being applied.

“Now is the best time for the repairs,” he said. “We’ll have to fix it eventually and it’s safe to assume that constructions costs will go up.”

The proposal didn’t see much opposition from the board of directors. Director Seth Warren asked about the longevity of the proposed fix, and while neither Hyde nor WLUSU director of member services Kyle Walker had an exact answer, both said  it would be more than a short-term fix.

Directors Ryan Neufeld and Jazz Clement, meanwhile brought up the state of the existing roof, with Clement asking “why hasn’t this been addressed earlier?”

“The one big thing is we have problems in the winter but you can’t do work during the winter,” said Walker who was the WLUSU president in 2010-11. Walker added that they were unable to complete the repairs in recent summers due to other construction projects and some uncertainty around the deal with Aramark as it was finalized last spring.

The repairs are expected to be completed by September of this year.

Leave a Reply