City of Yellowknife looks to scrap Aurora College Tin Can Hill deal

The City of Yellowknife is preparing to abandon an agreement that reserved parts of its most prominent green space for a new university campus.

On Monday, city council will debate whether to advise Aurora College that a Tin Can Hill memorandum of understanding signed in 2022 is being “terminated.”

That deal confirmed Tin Can Hill as the “potential location” of a future campus as the college worked to transform itself into a polytechnic university. It also started a process whereby the land would have been transferred from the city to the NWT government.

But the polytechnic transformation has since stalled and there’s nowhere near the available funding that would be needed to actually build the gleaming hilltop campus initially envisaged by the GNWT.

The land transfer, which was expected to occur in 2023, never took place.

“Discussions between the parties regarding Tin Can Hill as a Yellowknife polytechnic university campus have declined while the City of Yellowknife’s need for developable land for future needs has become more acute,” a briefing note prepared by City Hall for councillors reads.

City staff recommend that council agree to provide “immediate notice of termination” to Aurora College, which would become effective after 60 days.

While council could yet decide not to follow that advice, Aurora College itself sounded unperturbed by the suggestion on Friday.

In a statement to Cabin Radio, college president Angela James portrayed the issue in slightly different terms to those used in the city’s briefing note.

Whereas the city characterized the termination as an action the city would take, and included a letter to James dated February 19 advising her of the possibility, James said the city, college and GNWT had been “in discussions on a mutual agreement” to end the deal.

“If the MOU is mutually terminated, there would be no negative impact for Aurora College. There is currently no funding secured for a new campus, whether on Tin Can Hill or elsewhere,” James wrote.

“Aurora College’s pathway towards a polytechnic university is highlighted as the overarching priority in its new 2025-28 mandate agreement, which includes exploring partnerships to secure funding to develop student housing and a North Slave campus.”

‘Immediate need for land’

If the agreement is terminated, the vanishing prospect of a Tin Can Hill campus in the immediate future may be welcomed by residents who had opposed the idea.

Some residents had agreed with project leaders’ stated vision of a campus occupying about a twelfth of Tin Can Hill that would provide a stunning lakeside facility for a reinvigorated post-secondary institution.

Others, though, had fought against losing a green space beloved by dog walkers and a stone’s throw from downtown Yellowknife. They feared any development might mark the start of a slippery slope, with larger chunks of the hill set aside for a possible university expansion.

In practice, the existence of a deal reserving space for the campus – twinned with the near-total lack of cash to actually build it – placed Tin Can Hill in a form of stasis that meant no development was likely for some time to come.

The city’s latest tone, referring indirectly to the hill as “developable land,” suggests that with the deal gone, planners may soon look at other uses for the area.

“The city has a greater and immediate need for land within the municipal boundary
and can no longer hold Tin Can Hill as strictly reserved for post‐secondary use,” the briefing note to councillors reads.

In its February 19 letter to James, the city said its “need for more certainty over available land for future needs has increased.”

“We would be pleased to assist you in finding alternative sites, including in the downtown core area, to support your short, medium and long-term physical space needs,” James was told.

Community plan being updated

The City of Yellowknife is about to embark on a “comprehensive update” of its community plan, which may be one reason for acting now to more clearly define whether or not Tin Can Hill is land available to the municipality.

The community plan is the overarching document that guides how Yellowknife is developed and what, in broad terms, can go where.

Having Tin Can Hill available as a blank slate for that discussion may be helpful to councillors, planners and residents – who could collectively elect to keep the hill as it is, or may opt for a different vision.

The process of updating the community plan is just beginning and is designed to have multiple steps during which residents can have a say. (Cabin Radio plans extensive coverage of this process – watch our website for more information about opportunities to take part.)

The city expects a finalized community plan to be ready for GNWT approval by the back half of 2026.