Even schools make most of tight space at City Place
Public, Catholic students will share facilities in condo village
They say it takes a village to raise a child, yet people living in the forest of condo towers at City Place have found their vertical village lacks one thing: a school.
Last week, local parents, who are forced to put their school-age kids on buses every day, heard about a plan to remedy the situation, with the downtown core’s first split public/Catholic schools.
The schools will be part of an innovative complex that integrates them with a community centre and daycare, to form a hub planners hope will become the centre of life for residents young and old.
Many of the thousands of units in the City Place towers are so small they weren’t intended for families. But the city’s skyrocketing real-estate prices have kept many who moved in years ago from being able to afford to move out as their families grew. The 500-square-foot family is now a reality, and the city must find a way to provide more community spaces to accommodate parents and kids.
“This community is space-challenged,” said Peter Duckworth-Pilkington, a prin- cipal at ZAS Architects + Interiors, who helped design big, multi-use spaces for people to meet, hang out, check their email and hold meetings. “It’s all that stuff that would have happened in a suburban rec room.”
Lacking backyards, the 20,000 residents of City Place have flocked to Canoe Landing Park, with its signature oversized red canoe, to walk their dogs, work out and host picnics. When it opens in September 2019, the adjacent community hub, tentatively called “Block 31” will form the heart of the new neighbourhood, where people can hang out informally, take classes or organize events.
“It’s the kind of thing they’ve been doing in London, New York and Chicago forever,” said Duckworth. “You’re sharing space, but you’re also sharing programming opportunities and bringing together community.”
Local city councillor Joe Cressy held two community meetings to get input on the project and couldn’t believe how many young families showed up.
“There are already families there and there are people who want to start families, so it’s incumbent upon us to provide the necessary ameni- ties,” he said. “We need to make sure we’re building neighbourhoods and not just adding density.”
Both schools will have their own gymnasium and classrooms, but will share outdoor recreation space and have access to the dance studio, practice kitchen and indoor playground housed in the community centre. There will be underground parking and a green roof, a massive lobby with Wi-Fi, and space that can be booked for community events as small as birthday parties.
While some of the towers have been up for the better part of a decade, ground has yet to be broken on the schools because the three funders — the Catholic board, the public board and the city — all waited until they had collected enough money from developers to fund the project, said Paul Stevens, another principal at ZAS. But now that the project has a green light, each funder will benefit from being part of the bigger complex.
“That’s what people want to see: public agencies working together to get the most out of their investments,” Stevens said.
While the budget is still dependent on a few more towers yet to be built, the complex will probably cost about $55 million to build, he said.
Each school will be big in its own right, with an estimated 550 students, and the daycare will host 52 children, bringing the daytime population to more than 1,100 kids — all of them close enough to home to head upstairs for lunch.