The last two years have been good for Electronic Arts, especially from a financial point of view. Now that they’re profitable again, they can loosen some of their purse strings. To that end, they’ve decided to renovate parts of the campus in Burnaby. The campus as a whole is composed of two parts: phase I and phase II. The first phase was opened in 1999 and at the time, it seemed massive but the campus doubled in size in 2006 when phase II was opened.
They’ve decided to renovate the oldest parts of the campus first, which is phase I. The lobby, reception area, meeting rooms, the security desk, company store, library, arcade room, the atrium, and last but not least the cafeteria will all be either moved or completely re-done. They are doing the renovations in two stages with the lobby, reception area, atrium, and associated first and the mainly the cafeteria last.
The first stage will be done in March I believe but I won’t be around to see it. My contract ends at the end of February. It will be interesting to see what happens when they shut down the cafeteria. It’s impossible to renovate the cafeteria while maintaining the ability to prepare, cook, and serve more than a thousand people. The company has said that they will figure some way to continue to feed people while the cafeteria is being rebuilt but exactly how that will be done has not been revealed. Not only will the kitchen be out of commission, the seating area will be renovated as well. Even if you could magically get food to people, there’s no where for them to eat it. I guess people can just eat at their desks for a few months?
Anyways, I’ll have to drop by when everything is finished. I hope it’s impressive as the first time I saw the campus with my own eyes!