History of schools TDSB has sold raises questions

WATCH: The history of schools TDSB has sold raises questions about the wisdom of selling. Christina Stevens reports.

The largest current redevelopment of a former Toronto District School Board property is at the old Timothy Eaton Business and Technical Institute in Scarborough.

Plans call for close to 400 townhouses and a new YMCA on the property.

The parking lot will have room for over 200 cars and will be located right behind the Lapianta family’s house, which backs onto a huge field.

“It was supposed to be two storeys. Now I hear it’s going to be four stories and it’s going to be a parking lot,” said Ben Lapianta.

He added that the family hasn’t been able to get any answers about the plans. The YMCA said they hope their building is open by 2018, but refused to tell Global News anything else about the facility.

Once a TDSB property is sold, only the city can control what happens next, through zoning.

But not every school board property is redeveloped. Before a private company can purchase a school site, it must be offered to other school boards, and then to public agencies.

Data provided by the Toronto Lands Corporation shows that 64 TDSB Properties have been sold since 2009.

34 of those were sold to public agencies, including other school boards and the City of Toronto.

Private buyers, mainly developers, purchased the other 30 properties.

Monika Warzecha, Associate Editor of BuzzBuzzHome.com, tracked down which developers purchased what sites. She found no one company dominated, but most of the development was along similar lines.

“It was townhouses or single detached houses, and that’s probably because these are in low rise neighbourhoods to begin with,” said Warzecha.

In North York, two surplus public schools had very different fates. Single family homes in the $2 million range now occupy the former site of the Page School.

Just down the road, another former school, Appian, is unchanged after being purchased by the French school board — Conseil Scolaire Viamonde. Both buildings been closed and leased to private schools.

Now that the schools have been sold, kids living near them are in the catchment area for Elkorn Public school. That school is currently operating at 117% capacity, and that is projected to increase to 150% by 2019.

Willowdale trustee Alexander Brown said at one point, no one expected families with young children to move into the area.

“They were wrong, and unless you take a balanced approach moving forward on that, you are shooting yourself in the foot,” Brown said.