After the former staff and students gathered to reminisce and say good-bye, 92 butterflies were ceremoniously released and after a large tree branch strangely fell on the school yard 25 minutes after the closing bell, one question still remains: what does the future hold for the former D.A. Gordon building and property?
Carmen McGregor, a trustee with the Lambton-Kent District School Board, said the building and property, which covers 3-acres, was appraised at approximately $160,000.
She said the school has been declared surplus as well.
“That is the process once we have a school that shuts down, then we declare it surplus first and it has to follow the Ministry of Education Act procedures,” McGregor said. “That means we get it appraised and it is offered to our coterminous board, which is the separate system, and some of the other government organizations. They have first offer on it and that is a 90-day process. If the 90 days go by and there is no offer, at that point it comes back to us then we offer it out to the public. It gets listed by real estate, and it gets listed on the open market for sale.”
McGregor said the building and property should be on the open market in about a month.
McGregor added she has not been told of anyone that has come forward that is interested in the facility at this point.
“If an offer did come forward it would come to the surplus committee… they would look at any offers that would come in and whether it was in the parameters of acceptance,” she said. “If it was a really low offer, they may choose to wait to put it on the open market to see what price would come from it.”
Comparing this situation to the sale of the former W.T. Laing building a number of years ago, McGregor said once the school board sells the building, it is out of their hands.
“We put stipulations in that we ask that they present us with a plan of how they would utilize the building,” she said. “Once somebody buys it you absolutely have no control over what they do with it, which is what happened to W.T. Laing . Unfortunately when it is a school, it is deemed as the school boards fault, but it is kind of like selling your house and going back inside and telling people what to do with it.”
McGregor said she is hopeful that the building and property will be used again.
“I would really hope that somebody or something happens within the community that someone chooses to pick up on the property, it could be put to very good use,” she said. “Certainly with the prospect of revitalizing the south-side. It is close to the Museum, there is some really good sized classrooms, an absolutely wonderful-sized gym. A community-centre or something to that effect would be an excellent prospect for that building, along with many others.”
Jim Costello, director of education, said the former McKeough Public School in Chatham is a great example
“It has been purchased and re-purposed for a health and exercise facility,” Costello said. “It would be our hope that somebody from the Wallaceburg community would find a good use for that building and purchase it at fair market value and use it, re-purpose it, re-configure it. I think it would be great for the community.”
Costello said it was not cost-effective for the school board to keep the school, as it would have cost over $5 million to bring it up to Ministry standards.
However, Costello said this doesn’t mean the facility isn’t a good fit for someone in the private sector.
“Depending on the organization and what you do, you are held to different standards,” he said. “For a school with young children, especially with full day kindergarten, the standards are higher with the kind of equipment, the lack of asbestos in the building. If it is a different organization in the private sector, they might have different standards and they might be able to re-purpose the building without having to meet the same kind of higher standards that we do.
Costello added: “It was going to cost us a fair bit of money over the next five to 10 years, it was close to $5 million to get it back up to grade to where it needed to be. Depending on the organization and what they wanted it for, it may be less costly to do so.”
Watch for more on this story on the Sydenham Current.
