News   Jul 29, 2024
Na-Me-Res Opens Non-Profit Housing Project in Cabbagetown
 108     0 
News   Jul 29, 2024
News Roundup for July 29, 2024
 320     0 
News   Jul 29, 2024
Dash of Lemon
 428     0 

TLC wants to sell 31 properties to developers

The Toronto Lands Corporation is proceeding to sell 16 of the surplus school properties for the TDSB. They are as follows:

140 Borough Drive, Scarborough (west parking lot)
3945 Lakeshore Blvd. West, Etobicoke
Dublin School, 819 Sheppard Ave. West, North York
Franklin Horner School, 432 Horner Avenue, Etobicoke (near Brown's Line)
Harold Lawson School, 1710 Ellesmere Road, Scarborough (just east of McCowan)
Melody School, 24 Strathburn Blvd., North York (near Weston Rd. and 401)
Whitfield School, 123 Whitfield Ave., North York (near Islington and Steeles)

Apparently, interest has been shown by other public bodies (municipalities and other school boards) in purchasing the above properties. They must be offered first to such other parties, before being sold in the open market.

Also to be sold, in the open market, are these:

840 Coxwell Ave. (former administration office for East York)
180 Shaw Street
1135 Dundas Street East (warehouse building)
394, 396, 398, 400, 404, and 406 Leslie Street (a row of residential properties on Leslie, just north of Gerrard, adjacent to the Riverdale Collegiate property)

It's good to see that they are finally getting serious about selling at least a bit of their surplus property. They have a total of 97 surplus properties (not being used at all for school purposes).
 
Last edited:
If memory serves me correctly, a private school is currently operating in the Dublin School on Sheppard West (I seem to recall them moving in after St. Robert's - which had been there temporarily during construction of a new building - moved out), so maybe the private school is the entity itching to buy the property. I think people would be surprised if they knew how many school sites shift from TDSB to TCDSB to private like that (or some other sequence).

Unused schools often make great daycare/community centre spaces, and it makes sense for cities to buy such sites and mildly renovate them rather than build totally new ones. Given the "neighbourhood unit" centrality many of these schools have, it makes them even more valuable as repurposed municipal properties offering local services.
 
Scarberian, that is true. A number of the "surplus" public school properties are leased to Catholic schools, and have been for many years. An example is the former public high school at Renforth and Eringate in Etobicoke, which is still owned by the public board, although it has been occupied by a Catholic high school (Michael Power) for ten years now, or longer. Although these properties generate some rental income, you'd have to wonder why they aren't simply sold off.

As for the former Shaw school and others of its age and style, they are examples of propeties which might be "repurposed" with some imaginative thinking. But this building is pretty large for many uses. It would be an awfully large daycare indeed that would require this much space. In addition, I suspect it's energy-inefficient (large old windows, high ceilings, possibly poorly insulated) and would be expensive to operate. These buildings are part of Toronto's history, and you'd hate to see them torn down, but I suspect several of them will be.
 
Another view

What’s good about it? Nothing if you are a tenant in one of these houses & for 18 years grown to love the neighbourhood & thought of the house as home & then suddenly be told that you have to get out. It will be tough to find something else. They will probably knock all the old houses down & put up townhouses. Not everyone thinks they look good. Not nearly as good as my old home with my roses and morning glories & dogs playing in the yard.

You have always taken pride in paying your bills, grown older, & now face this nightmare.
 
Tenantofproperty said:
What’s good about it? Nothing if you are a tenant in one of these houses & for 18 years grown to love the neighbourhood & thought of the house as home & then suddenly be told that you have to get out. It will be tough to find something else. They will probably knock all the old houses down & put up townhouses. Not everyone thinks they look good. Not nearly as good as my old home with my roses and morning glories & dogs playing in the yard.

You have always taken pride in paying your bills, grown older, & now face this nightmare.
Click to expand...

wat
 
catcher_of_cats said:
Renters, especially subsidized renters do NOT have the right to remain at 'their' residence indefinitely. If they want this, they should do what everyone else does and go out and buy their OWN place.
Click to expand...

Who's getting kicked out of where here? Am I missing something? I thought this thread was about selling underused school properties. Are people living in unused classrooms?
 
Tenantofproperty said:
What’s good about it? Nothing if you are a tenant in one of these houses & for 18 years grown to love the neighbourhood & thought of the house as home & then suddenly be told that you have to get out. It will be tough to find something else. They will probably knock all the old houses down & put up townhouses. Not everyone thinks they look good. Not nearly as good as my old home with my roses and morning glories & dogs playing in the yard.

You have always taken pride in paying your bills, grown older, & now face this nightmare.
Click to expand...

This post makes no sense at all. No one is being kicked out of his home!

These school properties are tenanted, if at all, by other schools (Catholic or private), and at least some of them will be bought by their tenants, allowing the use to continue. True, others will probably be torn down, and this may cause some disruption in the area, but the property could then be developed with new houses (assuming it's a residential area, which most of them are)

If I were a neighbour to one of these vacant properties, which would I prefer to see: a school building sitting unused for many years, beginning to look more and more dumpy and contributing nothing to the neighbourhood, or a development of new houses which might uplift the surrounding area?
 
Yes we are

Obsrver Walt: This post makes no sense at all. No one is being kicked out of his home!

Yes we are being kicked out of our home.

These properties are neither vacant lots, nor unused schools.

394, 396, 398, 400, 404, and 406 Leslie Street (a row of residential properties on Leslie, just north of Gerrard, adjacent to the Riverdale Collegiate property)
-on these properties, last summer, you could have seen children playing in the yards, people gardening, people barbecuing, etc.


Your thread has given away the secret of who our landlord is.

As to Cather of Cats, I guess you either didn’t read my post or you did and replied like a troll accusing us of being subsidized, WHICH WE ARE NOT.

Dilla: Who's getting kicked out of where here? Am I missing something? I thought this thread was about selling underused school properties. Are people living in unused classrooms? No. houses where we have paid full rent & utilites.
Again, some people may think a mass of carbon copied boxes look attractive, but older houses with individual style are far more attractive.
 
Tenant: My apologies for saying that your post made no sense. I had forgotten that there are a few houses on Leslie Street being disposed of.

That said, I'm afraid that I still don't understand your post. Was the ownership of the properties kept secret from you, and if so, why? More importantly, why are you being kicked out? Unless the houses are being demolished, wouldn't the provisions of the Landlord and Tenant Act apply, to give you some security of tenure? What does your local school trustee have to say about this?
 
We asked the property manager, "Who owned the houses?" & were told, “We can’t tell you thatâ€. One property manager phoned us about something, while talking denied that it was the TDSB that owned the houses. We looked at the call display screen on our phone and TDSB was there. People talk. We heard that “The School board isn’t supposed to be buying and selling houses.†An older couple on the block passed away, & our landlord (a corporation) bought their house from their children (grown up) & has rented it to a few families during the years that we’ve been here. We have had a variety of property managers. One of them claimed she paid someone to shovel the snow in front of our house. My son, my husband and myself shoveled snow from the sidewalk in front of our house, just as all of the people on the block did. She was replaced.

We have heard that some of these houses may be “heritage houses†The tenants in one, were researching to find out if it was Gaelic wording engraved in the cement above their door, but it turned out to be the people that built the house close to 100 years ago. A group of people protested the cute little ginger-bread type cottage across the street being bulldozed to make room for box-type townhouses, but didn’t get anywhere. The elderly couple that had lived there had a few fruit trees in the yard & it looked really nice.

I looked at the Landlord Tenant Act and found:

“The Tenant Protection Act recognizes the purchaser's intent to occupy a rental unit when a rental property is sold and accepts this as a valid reason for termination of a tenancy provided the following circumstances are met: - the property must contain three or fewer residential units; - the landlord/vendor has entered into an Agreement of Purchase and Sale to sell the residential complex; and - the purchaser must, in good faith, require possession of the complex or a unit for the residential occupation of himself, the purchaser's spouse/same sex partner or a child or parent of one of them.â€

They did agree that we were excellent tenants – paid the rent on time every time, mowed the grass in summer, shovelled the snow in winter, got along with the neighbours, got compliments on our yard & garden.

We haven’t spoken to our local school trustee.
 
One more thing -

If you know whre we can rent a place for a reasonable price that has a fenced yard (for 2 quiet well-behaved dogs) Hopefully a garage, and is within Toronto, please let us know.
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top