St. Albert Public School Board will have to decide on a new site for their newly awarded K-9 school in Chérot, after council unanimously voted against redesignating the 25-acre parcel of land where it was supposed to be built.
On March 19, St. Albert Public Schools was awarded a new K-9 school in the Chérot neighbourhood through the Government of Alberta's School Construction Accelerator Plan.
At the time of the announcement, St. Albert Public Board chair John Allen said the intention was for the school to be built on a 25-acre community amenities site in the northwest of the Chérot neighbourhood. A motion to redesignate the site by replacing the words "high school" to simply "school" was brought forward by Coun. Sheena Hughes during council's March 4 meeting.
"I believed the school board needed to have an answer as to whether or not council intended to change the Area Structure Plan (ASP) to accommodate this desire, or if the council says 'no,' they need to know what's going on so we can all move forward and the province can then award the site on some piece of dirt somewhere in the St. Albert area," Hughes said.
Allen spoke to council on May 20, asking for the site's redesignation, and said a delay could lead to the project being moved back into the waiting list and replaced with one of the other submissions to the province's accelerator program.
Greater St. Albert Catholic School Board chair Lydia Yeomans was also in attendance, and said their board appreciated the high school designation for the site, as it aligned with their second priority capital plan.
Hughes was worried if council approved the decision, it would require an amendment to the ASP, a public hearing, and a subsequent approval from a completely new council following the October municipal election. These steps could lead to a delay as long as six months, potentially putting the K-9 project in further jeopardy.
A site in the Riverside neighbourhood was listed as an option for the K-9, and there is a 10-acre site in south Chérot. Council was told during the meeting the site readiness checklist for south Chérot, one of the requirements of the accelerator program, could be completed by the end of the week.
Coun. Ken MacKay agreed changing the ASP could put the project in greater jeopardy than putting the school on the south Chérot site.
"As we've learned, we weren't really ready, or weren't aware that the south Chérot site was going to be available to us when this announcement came," MacKay said.
He also worried about some of the logistics putting a school in the community amenities site, including a gravel road that would have to be paved at the cost of $10 to $15 million, and a school sitting on a "community amenities site that probably wouldn't see any actual construction until three or four years down the road."
With council voting against redesignating the site, St. Albert Public School Board will have to convene and decide how best to move forward and adjust its capital plan.
"Obviously we're disappointed, right? We had hoped to be able to build our K-9 on the community amenities site, and it's unfortunate that this is where we landed," St. Albert Public School Board superintendent Krimsen Sumners said.
"We want to be on the west side. That's where most of the development is going on. So we want to make sure that we have a site as far west and as far north as possible because of Ville Giroux, Chérot and Nouveau building out as quickly as they are," she said.
She added the board respects council's decision.
"Now the ball's in our court in order to get the support and the documentation that we need to make an application to get this already awarded building onto another site. Whether that site is the south Chérot site or the Riverside site, that will be up to administration to determine, but city council has got to get out of our way," Allen said.
