TLC wants to sell 31 properties to developers

[Errol]

Today the Toronto Lands Corporation (TLC) submitted a report to the Toronto District School Board’s (TDSB) recommending the sale of 31 of the 98 surplus properties not currently operating as TDSB schools in order to raise 100 million dollars.
That is a lot of money but it is like a drop in a ocean when there is over a billion dollars of repairs needed to the 650 remaining board buildings.
In order to balance its budget that is set by the Ministry of Education, the TDSB has pulled 40 million dollars out of its capital program for at least two years running.
Selling these lands will not materially improve the schools in our city but it will move 100 million dollars of public assets into the private sector.
The TLC calls this a “balanced approach.†I supposed they could have recommended that the board dump all 98 properties on the market.
One more point, with land values set to plummet in reaction to the US housing crisis, why are we looking to sell off these lands?
For more on this see my blog at saveschools.wordpress.com

 

[yyzer]

with land values set to plummet in reaction to the US housing crisis

why do you assume this? the real estate market in Miami, Phoenix, or Las Vegas has absolutely nothing to do with the real estate market in Toronto, Ontario...don't believe everything you read in the papers...

not so say that there won't be a slowdown, but there is no reason to assume there will be 'plummeting' prices..

 

[Errol]

the real estate market in Miami, Phoenix, or Las Vegas has absolutely nothing to do with the real estate market in Toronto, Ontario..

Ah the enthusiasm of youth. That is not a great bassis for selling off public assets.

 

[yyzer]

Ah the enthusiasm of youth

And another assumption! you couldn't be more wrong...

 

[UpAndComing]

One more point, with land values set to plummet in reaction to the US housing crisis, why are we looking to sell off these lands?

Errol, what evidence do you currently see in the market that leads you to believe that land values are set to plummet? Besides an opportunity your plug your blog...

 

[Observer Walt]

We had a thread quite recently on this topic. Maybe they could be combined.

If the TDSB finally is coming up with a plan to sell some schools, I say good. They are sitting on a small empire of real estate, while enrollment steadily drops. Many schools are running at 60% of capacity or less. Meanwhile, some of these properties are worth many millions of dollars. It's money that could certainly be put to use elsewhere in the school system.

As for "moving public assets into the private sector", where does that backwards logic come from? If a property is sold, the board would get money for it. It's a matter of converting an asset from one form to another. The money wouldn't be given away to the private sector somehow. It would stay in the public sector, and be used to rebuild old schools and other public purposes.

 

[ducati0000]

so many schools downtown is only at %40 of capacity..if they sell them make sure anything that goes up is beneficial to the neighborhood.Toronto own so much unused land or underused property,if they want to make money off future taxes why not sell unused property?.

 

[Errol]

Errol, what evidence do you currently see in the market that leads you to believe that land values are set to plummet? Besides an opportunity your plug your blog...

Plugging my blog was the reason I posted. But I could be correct or wrong about real estate values. My concern is for the value of these lands to the public in the future.

 

[Errol]

We had a thread quite recently on this topic. Maybe they could be combined.

If the TDSB finally is coming up with a plan to sell some schools, I say good. They are sitting on a small empire of real estate, while enrollment steadily drops. Many schools are running at 60% of capacity or less. Meanwhile, some of these properties are worth many millions of dollars. It's money that could certainly be put to use elsewhere in the school system.

All of these properties could be sold for millions of dollars but that is a drop in a bucket in relation to the capital needs of the school board. We will need those schools soon as the population increases and will not have the cash to buy them back. Why should a perfectly good community school close just because of the 60% mark. What should be important is the quality of education in the community.

 

[unimaginative2]

I don't think that we should ever close community schools in established neighbourhoods unless there is an obvious overlap with another facility, and that capacity will almost certainly never be needed, such a Catholic school in an area that was once overwhelmingly immigrant Catholic, but which is now more representative of the general population.

Just because it doesn't solve all of the school board's capital budget at a drop doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done.

 

[Observer Walt]

Just because it doesn't solve all of the school board's capital budget at a drop doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done.

No one would suggest that selling 31 properties will solve all of the problems, but I would call it a bit more than a drop in the bucket. I would certainly agree that it's not a reason to do nothing.

I would be surprised if a sale of 31 school properties could bring only $100 million, or a bit more than $3 million per property on average. I'll be interested to see where these specific properties are located and how large they are, but I would expect more money than that.

And another point: School properties do not generate tax revenue for the city. If sold to the private sector and developed, they would become taxable and would start making an ongoing contribution to public finances, as opposed to being a drain.

 

[Observer Walt]

nabru, I have a good deal of sympathy for your point of view, although I would point out that we are talking about the School Board, which is separate from the City. They have recently set up a separate body, the Toronto Lands Corporation, as referred to in the first post which started this thread. It's a new body, for a new purpose, and I can only hope that they will conduct business in a professional way and with proper professional advice and full transparency.

When a development site is being sold, the timing of the payment can work in two or three different ways. The owner can simply place the property up for sale, wait a reasonable time for bids to come in, then accept the best one. Alternatively, a developer might agree to buy a property, but the price would be set on a contingent basis, after the developer has applied for the desired density, with the price paid depending on achieving approval for a given density.

Edit: If my comment here sounds strange, it's because I was responding to a comment from someone named nabru. His comment subsequently seems to have disappeared for some reason. He had expressed concern about the track record of the City of Toronto in dealing with real estate matters.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Errol's first post clearly mentions surplus properties not currently operating as TDSB schools. The TDSB should certainly sell off *some* of these properties. Is there a list of these surplus properties floating around the internet?

 

[Observer Walt]

Scarberian, I looked on the TDSB website and couldn't find a list. Out of curiosity I may try to get one from their real estate department, which is located in Etobicoke not far from me. If so, I will post it here.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

The hard way to find this list would be to get a list of every property they own (possibly difficult since this would include stuff like greenfields in Scarborough where schools were never built, or properties leased to private schools, etc.) and then subtracting every property currently operating as a TDSB school.

Many "surplus" properties are used for storage, for temporary school sites during reconstruction, for daycares, ESL programs, leased to private schools as I just mentioned, and so on. I don't think there's really that many sites that are being left absolutely unused. Some of these never-built sites in Scarborough are de facto parkland. Examples include Sandhurst & Brimwood and Alton Towers & Goldhawk.