Kitchener submits offer for former Catholic school board site
Kitchener has submitted an offer to purchase the Waterloo Catholic District School Board’s former administrative site at 91 Moore Ave. and has directed staff to complete its due diligence to determine its appropriateness for “cemetery purposes, with limited community space.”
The property which abuts the Kitchener Mount Hope Cemetery, the city’s oldest active cemetery, has a 14,000-square-foot office building, a portion of which houses Extend-A-Family Waterloo Region, a local organization that provides support services for the developmentally challenged.
Extend-A-Family’s executive director, Alan Mills, had expressed some concern over the city’s initial interest in the property, but following some dialogue “we are confident that they’ll honour our current lease and that the sale to the city would be good for us,” he said in a recent email.
“We’re really more about services than we are about a building,” Mills added, “but we do very much value being part of this local neighbourhood, so would be very happy to stay.”
The city hasn’t advised ExtendA-Family nor the public of its full intentions with the property.
Michael May, the city’s deputy chief administrative officer, community services, said the impetus behind the city’s interest is that the school board put the property up for sale earlier this year.
In accordance with the Education Act, all Ontario school boards must offer surplus real property to other publicly funded bodies by issuing a proposal to sell, lease or otherwise dispose for a minimum period of 90 days.
“Given the proximity of this property to the city’s cemetery lands, the practical thing to do is to look at whether or not it would make sense for the city to purchase the property,” May said in an email. “Unfortunately, because we are currently in confidential land negotiations on this property, I can’t provide any further details at this time.”
At a regular council meeting in
March, representatives of the Mount Hope — Breithaupt Park Neighbourhood Association appeared before council stressing the importance of community space provided by the current building which is used for numerous events throughout the year.
Ted Parkinson, the association’s communications director, said condo towers and office buildings will add lots of people to an area that’s already short on space for holding meetings and public gatherings.
“People talk about neighbourhood and Love Your Hood. For me, I’ve been working on the neighbourhood association for over 10 years now and the most important thing at the core of all this is places to meet, so people have a room they can book where they can share food and potlucks and plan things, and there’s very little out there …”
A city Planning Around Rapid Transit Stations plan for future intensification of the midtown area recognizes the area’s character, including heritage sites such as the Kitchener Mount Hope Cemetery, and notes that parkland makes up only 0.5 per cent of the total land in the midtown catchment.
Many cemeteries these days also serve as public gathering spots in urban areas that lack green space, as the provision of parkland in some cities hasn’t kept up with development.
The Moore Avenue property is just 0.82 acres. However, it is just down the street from the former Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church and a former convent that was saved from demolition in 2015, and is next door to the former Sacred Heart School, which was previously sold to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Hamilton, and currently sits boarded up.