Mount Allison has started a five year, $95 million project to renovate the Ralph Pickard Bell library, and at the same time, build a parking lot and multisport complex on Lansdowne Street. The new Lansdowne building will first serve as an interim library for three years while the major renovation of the Ralph Pickard Bell building takes place.
At a Tantramar council meeting in November, new university president Ian Sutherland outlined plans for the project and what’s in them for the wider community.
The multisport complex will “have a whole host of activities available for university, faculty, staff, students, yes, but also for the community,” said Sutherland. Plans for the facility include an indoor walking track, a high performance sports rubber court floor, and removable astroturf for indoor winter field sports.
The newly renovated library “will be not just a facility of the university,” Sutherland told councillors. “There’ll be a new entrance on York Street, and the innovation and creativity lab that we’re building will also be open and a great space for town-meets-gown kind of activities, projects and initiatives.”
The most immediate effect will be the addition of 154 parking spaces to downtown Sackville, and with it, the disappearance of the greenspace that is the Lansdowne Field. Sutherland told council that construction of the lot is expected to begin this spring with the lot ready by the fall. To compensate for the loss of recreational space, the university is revitalizing Normandy field by the Sackville Waterfowl Park for recreation and intramural sports.
The new Lansdowne lot will be needed especially in the short term, as the current gravel parking lot on Lansdowne will be used as a staging area for the construction project.
The new building is expected to open as an interim library in 2027, and then, by about 2030, it will be converted to a multi-sport complex. The final iteration of the building will include a community event space, facilities for various sports, as well as large tournaments and trade shows, said Sutherland.
In response to a question from Mayor Andrew Black, Sutherland explained he expected the community to have scheduled access times to the sports facility. “So we have very specific program times where those facilities are completely open to whoever in the community wants to be partaking of the walking track, the pickleball courts, whatever it is,” he said. “And then also working with the wider community and other organizations and initiatives to host tournaments, to have guest sporting teams coming in that are not necessarily visiting the university, but are coming to Tantramar.”
Sutherland said that both the new facilities would be “first and foremost for the students and faculty and staff the university, but they’re also for residents of Tantramar, at least for part or portion of the year.”
Mount Allison has already started some of the work for the $95 million project. Two development permits were approved by Plan 360 in October, for a total of nearly $1 million in value. The projects include alterations to add an exit to the Crabtree building beside the Ralph Pickard Bell Library, and converting change rooms and washrooms at Convocation Hall to new uses.
Work on both the interim library and Lansdowne parking lot are expected to begin this spring, with the parking lot due to open in September, and the library in the summer of 2027. The Ralph Pickard Bell construction is expected to run from then until the fall of 2030, when the new library is slated to reopen, to be followed by the conversion of the multisport complex on Lansdowne.
