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BROADBAND COMMUNITIES
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www.broadbandcommunities.com
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MAY/JUNE 2016
Gigabit Student
Housing: Olds College,
Olds, Alberta, Canada
In this issue, BroadBand Communities showcases Centennial
Village and College Court Townhouses, two student
residences at Olds College in Canada. This public
college partnered with a private housing operator and a
municipal service provider to deliver advanced internet
services to students. Thanks to Nathan Kusiek, Chris
Thompson and Daniel Andres of O-NET and Tanya Kure
of CHOC for providing the information for this profle.
By Masha Zager / Broadband Communities
O
lds is a small town in Alberta, about 60 miles
north of Calgary and surrounded by farms
and forests. However, it boasts the fastest
internet service in Canada, provided by O-NET, one
of Canada's few municipal fber networks. Olds is also
the home of Olds College, a two-year public institution
founded in 1913 to teach farming and home economics.
Tough the curriculum has been brought up to date, the
college still specializes in agriculture, horticulture, and
land and environmental management. A fashion institute
at its Calgary satellite campus serves as the modern-
day equivalent of the old home economics program.
Olds College is known for its emphasis on innovation,
entrepreneurship and collaboration with industry
partners in training students for workforce readiness.
A few years ago, the college decided to replace an
aging dormitory with a new, state-of-the-art building
that would house 450 of its 1,500 students during the
academic year and host conferences and community
meetings during the summer. In an innovative move,
PROPERTY OF THE MONTH
the college issued an RFP for a third-
party provider to design, build, fnance
and operate the new building. Te
winner was Shunda Consulting &
Construction Management, an Alberta-
based company that had done business
with the college for two decades.
Shunda formed a subsidiary, College
Housing Olds Co. (CHOC), to handle
the dormitory project.
CHOC entered into a long-term
partnership with the college and built
the new building, Centennial Village,
on campus. It also purchased College
Court Townhouses, the other group
of dormitory buildings remaining
after the obsolete building was shut
down. College Court was built in
the 1980s and was still viable, but it
needed renovation.