The Toronto District School Board and, to a lesser extent, the Catholic school board, have been selling some properties. Possibly the biggest sale in terms of dollar amount is about 6 acres of vacant land on Antibes Drive, just off Bathurst Street north of Finch, sold for $16.5 million by the TDSB to Menkes, presumably as a future apartment site.
The TDSB has also sold a vacant property on Antioch Drive, near Eglinton and Rathburn in Etobicoke, for $3.3 million. It had been owned since the 1950s but was never used for school purposes. It had been used as a neighbourhood park. The new owners are the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority so presumably it will continue to be parkland. The site is 5.89 acres.
A school on Whitfield Avenue near Islington and Steeles was sold by the TDSB to the Catholic board for $3.9 million. A ischool on Sheppard Ave. West was sold for $7.4 million.
An elementary school property with 4.23 acres of land on Page Avenue, near Bayview and Finch, was sold to a developer for $8.6 million.
The Catholic District School board sold a former high school with 2.4 acres of land located at Panorama Court in Rexdale (formerly Father Henry Carr School) to the City of Toronto for $5,110,000. The City is remodelling the building and will be using it as a social services centre. The Catholic board sold a property on Manning Avenue downtown to Urban Capital, a developer, for $6.5 million, and another site in the central area at 486 Shaw Street, near College, for $10,900,000. It would be a good townhouse site. A vacant site of 4.94 acres on Burnhamill Place in Etobicoke was sold for $9,250,000. It will probably be developed with townhouses.
Both of these school boards have surplus property to sell. It's obviously worth a good deal of money. Going back to the discussion which started this thread, at a time when money is needed to remodel older buildings, etc., it's a bit hard to understand why some people continue to object to selling vacant or significantly underutilized properties.
Edit: To put this into better perspective, construction of a new elementary school from the foundations up, for several hundred students , would cost in a range of $6 to 8 million.
