Before choosing the University of Saskatchewan land just east of Innovation Place, the President CEO of Saskatchewan Polytechnic says they looked at other spots, including a few downtown locations for the new Joseph A. Remai campus.
Dr. Larry Rosia estimates it was about eight years ago they started looking around for a new location.
He explains that right now in Saskatoon the campus is spread out in 11 different buildings around the city, for a total of about 1.2 million square feet.
Dr. Rosia says they looked at whether they could rebuild in their current location, but there wasn’t enough space.
In talks with the City, there was a site on the West side that was pointed out, and Sask Poly also looked at locations downtown.
Rosia says “At the time, the mills weren’t going to go anywhere for quite a long time. We had the railroad tracks there. The City Yards was looked at as well. The armoury, we looked at those locations.”
He believes the best possible solution was the site they found near both the University of Saskatchewan and Innovation Place, because the space is there, and it promotes more collaboration with the university and the research happening at Innovation Place.

Dr. Rosia was asked at a recent NSBA event, considering the shortage of affordable housing, would Saskatchewan Polytechnic look at building some nearby student accommodations.
He answered that up until recently, students weren’t really seeing a shortage of accommodation, but there are challenges with affordability.
He suggested it could be a second phase down the road, but then stated, “But frankly, I don’t want to be in the housing business. It’s not our core business. We’re not good at it, and I think we leave that to private industry to build the housing for students.”
Classes will continue in their current locations for a few more years.
There is no set timeline for when the new campus project will finish, but a sod turning is expected this year.