Lorne Ave Public School may be one step closer to a date with the wrecking ball.
A plan was endorsed by the Corporate Services Committee Tuesday to turn the playground into a public park, and demolish the building on the city-owned property to sell that portion of land for residential development.
Local firm Campus Creative made a last minute plea to repurpose the building into a new inter-generational community centre, a private school that would create jobs for qualified teachers looking for work.
“These would be all fully qualified people that we would easily be able to find by the surplus of teachers that are currently unemployed and it would be a sort of co-operative model where there would be a profit share around the school,” said William Komer of Campus Creative.
Komer says the plan wouldn’t cost any taxpayer dollars.
But Coun. Jesse Helmer questioned whether the plan was viable.
“I think there’s going to be, unfortunately, lots of opportunities about repurposing school properties into community hubs,” said Helmer.
“I think we need to, as a city, to think about how we’re going to be involved in that process, to what extent we’ll have municipal objectives that we want to accomplish there where we could be a partner.”
While demolition costs are pegged at around $3 million, staff believe they can recover some of that money by selling part of the 1.4 hectares of land for new housing.
A motion to have staff prepare to demolish the building will go to full council for a final vote, but city politicians say they remain open to any other last-minute proposals.
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