Co-ordinated planning urged for Heritage Valley facilities

A new public high school and city recreation centre in the far southwest should be planned together and possibly connected, the area’s councillor and its school trustee say.

Faced with an urgent need to build new high schools, southwest Edmonton public trustee Nathan Ip wants the school district and city administrators talking, pronto, about whether the two buildings in Heritage Valley should be designed to be complementary.

Collaborating could potentially save the city and the school board money, and give students better access to physical education facilities and other services, Ip said Monday.

“The need is very clear. We need to reimagine how we build public facilities and how we support our kids in education,” he said.

Both Ip and Ward 9 Coun. Tim

Cartmell are approaching their colleagues for support in the next week to nudge the city and school district to start discussions.

Cartmell will ask city administrators to tally the cost of jumping into project planning now, even if a new recreation centre could be a decade away. He estimates it could be $1 million for a concept design, and about $2.5 million for a schematic design.

With other recreation centres to be constructed in the west end’s Lewis Farms and Coronation Park, it could be 2023 before the city attempts to build a Heritage Valley recreation centre, Cartmell said.

“It’s just good planning, that’s all; it’s not to jump the queue,” he said Monday.

The Terwillegar recreation centre is overwhelmed, serving 1.2 million visitors a year when it was designed for 800,000, Cartmell said.

The Heritage Valley area is at the far south end of James Mowat Trail and 141 Street SW. The neighbourhood area structure plan has set aside 116 hectares for a town centre, which will include a future LRT stop, high-density transit-oriented development, a recreation centre and new public and Catholic high schools.

The Edmonton public school board has said it needs work to get underway within the next three years on two new south-side public high schools to accommodate 2,400 students each. The school district predicts existing high schools will be full by 2021. By 2025, it will have 6,000 more teens than spaces currently available in high schools.

In November, the provincial government announced it would spend $79 million to build the first phase of a Heritage Valley high school for 1,800 students. Construction could take until 2022 or 2023, and the school board wants an addition that would hold 600 more students.

Constituents tell Ip there’s a lack of amenities and meeting space in southwest Edmonton, which is why he’s pushing for more schools to strike partnerships with the city, community groups and other public agencies. Gathering spaces, health services and a library would all be a good fit for the Heritage Valley town centre, he said.

City spokesman Christopher Webster said plans for a new Heritage Valley recreation centre are preliminary. The city has yet to decide how much it would cost or what amenities it would have.

Edmonton’s Catholic school district has similar sharing arrangements with civic centres. The Cardinal Collins high school completion centre is housed within the Clareview recreation centre, and a similar arrangement is planned for the Lewis Farms recreation centre.

Ip’s motion to prompt joint planning goes before the public school board Tuesday afternoon. Cartmell is putting his motion before city council Feb. 13.