New use for school eyed
New mural planned for next year on building next to library
A new plan for reusing King George Public School once it closes for good in September 2019 is expected to be proposed to a city committee next week.
The plan is for students at King George to complete this school year and next in the historic building on the northeast corner of Hunter St. E. and Armour Rd., and then the school will close.
In the meantime, a modern new school is expected to be built on abutting lands that have long been owned by the city’s Museum and Archives. It will also replace nearby Armour Heights Public School.
For the city, it will mean handing over half the museum’s property – about 1.75 acres of the museum’s four acres – to the Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board.
In February, city council agreed to it. In exchange, the school board offered to help the city help pay for a new watermain and repairs to Museum Dr. (including a new sidewalk).
When council agreed to this arrangement, the future of King George Public School was still in limbo. The building is 105 years old and said to be structurally sound.
But on Thursday, a proposal for reuse of the building is expected to be revealed to the city’s museum and archives advisory committee.
The committee meets on Oct. 12. The agenda states that the city’s director of community services, Ken Doherty, will present the proposed future use of the school.
The idea is to share the information with the museum committee, states the agenda, because the proposed new use could have an impact on the museum.
Doherty couldn’t be reached for comment on Friday. School board trustee Rose Kitney was also unavailable for comment.
At the time that council agreed to give away the land, Coun. Lesley Parnell urged that the city look into the possibility of moving the cramped Art Gallery of Peterborough into King George Public School.
Parnell said if the school is sound - and doesn’t need any expensive maintenance such as asbestos removal - it could be inexpensive to move the AGP there.
Also on Oct. 12, there’s a meeting of the city’s arts, culture and heritage advisory committee that has a busy agenda. Here’s some of what that committee will be discussing:
Downtown mural
A plan to have a mural painted on the side of the YWCA building downtown this fall has been nixed. A city staff report states that the YWCA has decided the time isn’t right to add a mural after all.
Meanwhile, the same report states that the city’s not going to commission another mural in an archway beneath the Hunter Street Bridge in the summer of 2018, after all – the project will resume in 2019.
Instead, the plan is to have a new mural painted on the white building at Simcoe and Aylmer St., next to the public library, that the city recently bought (the building already has a mural of the historic firehall).
Artspace will put out a call for artists before the end of 2017. The new mural would be painted in the spring of 2018.
Peterborough Examiner archives to be digitized
Issues of The Peterborough Examiner from as long ago as the late 1800s may soon be digitized an available for viewing from any computer with an Internet connection, if a city plan comes to fruition.
The city’s Heritage Preservation Office is looking into obtaining permission to digitize the library’s collection of Examiners on microfiche (which is under copyright).
“Funding is available from the library to complete this project, and if it proves possible to do so, the city will undertake the digitization of much of the holdings of 19th-century newspapers,” states a city staff report.
The Examiner is 170 years old this year.
NOTE: See more city council coverage on Pages A1 and A3.