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Retired educator and University of Regina Senate member Jim Gallagher, who has combed every inch of Wascana Park in his decades in the city, acknowledges the back of the 60-year-old Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) building isn’t exactly the most attractive part of the park.

And were it simply a matter of replacing the existing 18,000-square-foot structure — which has always been a bit of an anomaly in the park’s aesthetics — with a new or more befitting building on the edge of the park, it wouldn’t bother Gallagher all that much.

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But he is very concerned that the 70,000-square-foot, three-storey commercial enterprise — thenew headquarters for Brandt Industries, with additional space available for lease to other firms, which will overlook the Legislative Building across Wascana Lake — will now be the second major new commercial development in the park.

It accompanies the 80,000 square-foot Connexus Credit Union headquarters on College Avenue. This week, construction fences went up around the 2.3 acres from College all the way back to Wascana Pool, for the purposes of removing trees and extending Lorne Avenue to accommodate traffic, parking, infrastructure and the new bank building itself.