Board dismisses Juravinski’s school issues
The public school board is hoping to get shovels in the ground this summer for its new Greensville elementary school.
The board provided an update to the community on May 24 at Spencer Valley School. During the meeting, philanthropist Charles Juravinski held the floor for about 10 minutes, speaking passionately about what he identified as the main issues of the school’s proposed design plans — namely parking and lighting.
Juravinski lives on 10 acres of land across from the once and future school site.
“I want to congratulate the school board and all the staff on what they are attempting to accomplish,” he said. “I think it’s excellent for the community; however, I think it short-sighted as far as parking and bus access.”
The new Greensville J.K. to Grade 8 school and community hub is a roughly $13-million joint project that will be home to a school for 347 students, 2,500square-foot day-care centre, Hamilton Public Library branch and community centre. It will go to tender June 5 and is slated to be open by September 2019.
The school will be built behind the former Harvest Road school site, which will be the parking lot in the new design. The update presented at the meeting focused on giving the community a tour of the proposed school and its features and discussed the municipal approvals.
“This is a project that cuts the mould,” said board trustee Greg Van Geffen.
He said the project has received approval from the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change for septic and storm water, and is now waiting on final approvals from the city.
“We want to get shovels in the ground this summer,” he said, noting the June 5 tender date.
The new school will have two full-day kindergarten classrooms, 11 regular classrooms, two special education rooms, a resource room, 4,000-square-foot double gym, and science, art and music rooms.
Throwing hardline questions at Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board staff in front of an audience of about 100, Juravinski spoke of the increased traffic he expects on Harvest Road.
“I don’t know who’s coming in how many cars, but the parking is totally inadequate, totally unsafe,” he said, noting that he expects upwards of 600 people on a daily basis.
The lot will have 61 spaces. The end result of the meeting didn’t faze Hamilton-Wentworth Public School Board chair Todd White, who described the meeting as unusual, but said the board would continue with their plans.
Other residents echoed Juravinski’s traffic and parking concerns, especially on weekends when visitors are known to flock to the area to visit the waterfalls.
Juravinski also brought up foot traffic at the library. According to some of the librarians that were there, they expected 200 visitors daily. Juravinski said he had scouted out the Dundas library, and there were always 25 cars parked in the lot.
Van Geffen reiterated the needs at Greensville school are no different than other areas when it came to parking.
“You go through complications and that may be an understatement on some of these weekends. but the long and the short of it is the parking spaces that are there, staff are confident in moving forward and everything that I’ve heard from the City of Hamilton is that they’re confident in moving forward.”