Kim McLean, a UTSC alum who also served as the university’s Chief Administrative Officer from 1999-2012, discusses the planning that went into the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre and how it served as an opportunity to connect the surrounding community with the university.
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0:01
I think for me, the, the Pan Am facility was sort of the crowning achievement of everything. And it was one of the things that kept me there towards the end.
0:12
I had been there 12 years which is a very long time to be anywhere. But I’d say the last five or six years of that time…
0:20
It was, and I loved that project because it started in 2004 with a crazy idea one day when we were getting together in the morning and I think I’d had too much coffee.
0:35
I always joke I’d have too much caffeine and there was lots going on in the community at the time, over that period for several months. There were shootings in the local area and there was a real push to find places for youth to go.
0:49
And I’m a big believer that universities and public institutions should embrace their neighbourhoods. And I think it’s important that they matter in those neighbourhoods.
1:03
And the Pan Am project for me was much more than about what it is, right? The pools and the gyms. It’s about what it does. And what it does is it, the concept of the place was to bring, for me,
1:18
to bring in youth and families from the local area onto the university campus, experience it, and then hopefully those children as they grow are comfortable to think about going to university.
1:34
So it doesn’t become sort of an ivory tower, you know walled place. It becomes a place that’s just part of their neighbourhood and part of their experience.
