Art school asks school district to delay eviction

Hopes to move into adjacent project in a couple of years

Officials at the Vancouver Island School of Art are hoping to buy some time while they plan a move to a new location, directly beside where they are now.

“It’s incredibly fortuitous,” Colette Baty, president of the art school board, said of the potential site, where a mixed-use residential project is in the works. “It’s almost like the stars all aligned.”

She said that the Purdey Group, the developer, heard about the school and decided to pull its accepted application for the site so that the facility could be included. “It’s totally unheard of,” Baty said. The art facility has been on Greater Victoria school district land on Quadra Street near Kings Road for 13 years, while the new site would be on adjacent property on Fifth Street.

The district is looking to use the current art school land for Artemis Place, an alternative school for young women and transgender youth.

Artemis Place has 50 students, some of whom are young mothers who can make use of the childcare facilities there.

It is currently located in the Dean Heights Annex, which the district is hoping to repurpose for use by Lansdowne Middle School.

The annex is on a corner of the Lansdowne property and has space for as many as six classrooms.

School district secretary-treasurer Mark Walsh said that both Lansdowne and Central middle schools are full and space is at a premium.

The district plan is to move Artemis Place in 2019 after upgrades have been done to the Quadra Street site. The art school would move out this September.

Spurring the district’s efforts to add more classroom space is the outcome of a 2016 Supreme Court of Canada case that restored B.C. teachers’ 2002 contract language, leading to smaller class sizes.

Baty said the move to the Fifth Street location would mean the school could remain in the Quadra Village neighbourhood, as has been hoped.

Members have presented a proposal to a Greater Victoria school board committee, looking for approval to spend two more years at their current site while the Fifth Street development is underway.

The proposal will be heard at a meeting of the full Greater Victoria school board on Monday.

“It’s very, very preliminary at this point,” Walsh said. “A very interesting-looking proposal, there’s no doubt.”