Icon Waterloo says move-in days away, but students skeptical

CTV Kitchener: Waiting for apartments Frustration is mounting for students still waiting to get into the Icon Waterloo high-rise. Abigail Bimman reports.

It’s now been one week since the first date students were given for moving into the Icon Waterloo building.

More recently, students were told that move-ins would start Friday, with emails to be sent Thursday with specific timeslots.

As of late Thursday afternoon, those emails had not started arriving.

“I hope everything will go as scheduled … but I’m not sure what will happen,” said one student, who identified himself as Harris and did not want his last name published.

Harris, a second-year math student who lives in China when not in school, spent one night in a hotel and has found a place elsewhere in Waterloo that will take him in for the rest of the month.

Other students haven’t been so lucky – either shelling out big bucks for hotels, staying on friends’ couches, or drivingbetween Waterloo and their home communities on a daily basis.

“Since I live close by it’s not too frustrating, but other people have been in worse situations,” said Thomas Arellino, who has been carpooling between Waterloo and Guelph.

Other students have concerns ranging from hotel rooms without kitchen space, leaving them with few options for meals, to concerns that delays at Icon will get to the point where time that could be spent studying for midterms is instead spent moving.

City officials have already inspected the building on multiple occasions – most recently finding the building lacking in “minimum life safety equipment. Another inspection is scheduled for Friday.

Icon Waterloo declined a request from CTV News to talk about the issues inside the building.

With reporting by Abigail Bimman