Targeted by vandals, vacant school slated for demolition
The site of 24 police-reported incidents since it was decommissioned in 2010, Ken Jenkins School is slated for demolition by June.
“There’s people breaking in to get inside for shelter or a place to hang out,” said Shauna Bzdel, director of land and real-estate management for the City of Regina. “It’s constantly recurring ... and it’s just very onerous.”
The most recent break-in, which included vandalism and graffiti happened just last week. The building has been boarded up again since.
Since the school’s closure in 2010, the building has been plagued with police incidents at an average of more than two per year, a high number for a single property, according to Regina Police Service (RPS) spokesperson Elizabeth Popowich.
Despite the building being boarded up, the nearby play structures are still a gathering place for some people in the area.
“That would mean that it sometimes might attract users of the space who aren’t there for a lawful purpose,” said Popowich in a written statement.
Not only has the school become a target for crime, Bzdel said it’s been in “disarray” for quite a few years. Unsafe, the building poses a liability to the city if anyone were to go inside and get injured.
“Due to its age, deterioration of the structure, and the building not being economically salvageable, the City will need to have it demolished,” says a request for proposals (RFP) released by the city last week.
The RFP does not indicate a budget for the demolition, but Bzdel said the project should be completed by June.
The play structures that are adjacent to the north side of the school are not a part of the project and will not be removed or altered in any way, said the RFP.
Ken Jenkins School was closed in 2010 because of low enrolment numbers. At a school board meeting in October 2009 it was cited as having one of the lowest enrolments in the system. It was one of 10 schools slotted for closure between 2008 and 2017, which was outlined in the Regina Public Schools 10-year renewal plan released in the fall of 2007.
The City of Regina purchased the land from the province and the building lease from the Regina Board of Education in 2013 for $300,000.
“Once the school was closed the Regina Board of Education did not need the building and the province did not need to the land,” said Bzdel in an emailed statement.
She said the city never intended to develop the site, but it was assessed to be worth more than it cost, prompting the city to purchase the land in hopes of selling it for a profit. However, two conditional offers in the past five years have fallen through, the latest of which fizzled out in December 2019.
The land remains up for sale. Located in the Normanview subdivision the 3.8 acres is currently zoned institutional with a portion in the floodway designation. Property taxes were $49,512 in 2017 based on an assessed value of $3,064,500.