ABOVE: Mark McAllister looks at the two community groups fighting for the Don Mills Middle School field.
TORONTO – There are two starkly different opinions about what to do with a Don Mills middle school field deemed surplus.
There are two community groups fighting for the land; one wants an arena, the other wants green space.
A Don Mills resident, Leslie Burt, recently started a petition to urge the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) to reconsider its plan to sell off a “surplus” field at Don Mills Middle School. She claims the “majority of people in Don Mills want it to remain a field.”
So far, 196 people have signed the online petition to have the land saved so it can continue to be used by the area residents.
The field is situated on the north end of the school located near Lawrence Avenue East and the Don Valley Parkway.
Map: What are the sites involved?
The TDSB voted in June to declare the land surplus and put it up for sale to help fund the board’s three-year capital plan.
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But the group of concerned citizens are one of two groups that don’t want to see condo development beside the school. The Don Mills Civitan Club had been pushing for the city to buy the land for the arena. A decision was supposed to be made by the city’s Government Management Committee, but in October they deferred the motion until January.
Now Peter MacInnis, secretary of the Don Mills Civitan Club, is looking towards that January meeting in hopes the city will approve the purchase of the land and the community will be given the go-ahead to build an arena.
He wants a replacement for the Don Mills Civitan Arena built outside of Don Mills Middle School as it is owned by Cadillac-Fairview and is set to be torn down in 2020. Right now, a host of community members use the existing arena including a high school hockey team, kids at St. Bonaventure School, learn-to-skate programs and senior skate programs.
A replacement site at York Mills and the Don Valley Parkway had been proposed for the arena but is simply too far for many people in the community, MacInnis said.
“We have an awful lot of our families that walk to Don Mills arena, that walk to the apartments around the rink. They’re single-mothers, no cars, we have the at-risk program at Flemingdon, kids are coming into our program now at Don Mills from that program,” he said. “York Mills and Don Valley Parkway is just too out of the way for those people.”
WATCH: (AUGUST 16 report) Don Mills Arena looking for a new location.
Burt claims the land outside of Don Mills Middle School should stay green space rather than be developed for an arena or anything else.
MacInnis however sees a new arena as a compromise between the community members wanting a green space and the supposed threat of development.
“But if it’s going to be developed anyway, then we’d much sooner a community use it than some sort of mixed-use density or whatever that application happens to be,” he said.
Organizers of the petition hope to get 1,000 signatures so they can bring the matter to the school board and have the surplus designation reversed.
– With files from Mark McAllister
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