MacHall lease negotiations extended by one year

By Fabian Mayer, October 9 2014 —

Student leaders and University of Calgary administration have extended the agreement that gives the Students’ Union the right to manage MacHall by one year.

The current agreement has been extended to Dec. 9, 2015. SU vice-president operations and finance Adam Swertz said the extension is a normal part of the process and is nothing to worry about.

According to the SU’s 2013 financial statement, 92 per cent of their revenue comes from businesses they run in MacHall. Swertz said the negotiations are going much better than last year.

“I talked with Eric Termuende who was in my position last year. He was blown away at the progress we’ve made because not much happened last year,” Swertz said.

If everything goes as planned, SU executives will brief their successors on the details of the agreement and will likely sign it in late summer or fall of next year.

“Historically, these negotiations have taken forever. The quickest turn around was three years,” Swertz said. “It’s slow but we’ll get there.”

Swertz was surprised the SU and administration have only disagreed in a few areas.

“I thought there would be a lot more contention going into this. It’s like any negotiation, both sides are trying to get the best deal from it,” Swertz said.

While Swertz highlighted the importance of getting the agreement right, he doesn’t think students will notice any major changes.

“The things that will be altered are far more operational than anything. I mean there’s no way that we’re going to lose control of our space or anything crazy is going happen,” Swertz said.

Both sides agreed that the current agreement should be split up into three smaller ones dealing with different parts of the lease. Swertz is hopeful that the negotiations on these agreements will be completed under the current SU executive.

“Our timelines are looking like we’re going to have a document ready to go and be vetted by our lawyers on both sides by the end of March,” Swertz said.

Administration declined to comment on the negotiations.