The University of Waterloo has purchased five buildings on the edge of its campus from BlackBerry for $41 million.
The deal, which was announced Friday and will take effect in February, sees 300,000 square feet of buildings and their associated land on the southwest corner of the Columbia/Phillip intersection change hands.
“Anytime you get a chance to get buildings and land contiguous to your existing campus, you have to take advantage of that,” Tim Jackson, Waterloo’s vice-president of university relations, tells CTV News.
“Space is probably the biggest constraint we have. We’ve grown massively over the past decade.”
BlackBerry will continue to occupy two of the buildings until 2019 at the latest, while the other three will immediately be turned over to the school.
The buildings changing occupancy immediately are currently known as BlackBerry 1, BlackBerry 3 and BlackBerry 16.
Jackson says university officials will figure out exactly what those buildings will be used for over the next few months.
“Generally speaking … we have a need for student space, we have a need for faculty space, things like labs, and we have a need for administration space,” he says.
BlackBerry 2 and BlackBerry 4 are the buildings the company will retain a presence in.
