The Board of Trustees endorses Administration's recommendation to obtain flood relief funding from the Minister of Education for the replacement of Elbow Park school. Administration notes that they have consulted with community stakeholders whose overwhelming preference is for the replacement solution, which is supported for the following summary reasons:
- Replacement is less expensive than restoration/repair
- Flood mitigation will continue to be a problem for the existing building
- Hazardous materials in the existing building
- The current building is not up to current building codes
- A replacement ensures deferred maintenance is eliminated
- Barrier Free
- Standard size gymnasium
- Curriculum Delivery
- A new school could accommodate a larger number of students.
Once again current building standards and practices are conflicting with buildings created almost a century ago. Some of the risks of replacement are as follows:
- The school has been identified as a key historic resource for the city of Calgary is listed on its inventory of historic resources:
- Once the existing building is demolished the Elbow Park neighbourhood will permanently lose one of its key heritage assets
- Restoration/repair is a greener (re-use/recycle) option than replacement
- Although a new building may assist in addressing current deferred maintenance all buildings, no matter their age, have ongoing maintenance items to address that need to be budgeted for on an ongoing basis.
- Flood mitigation of an existing heritage building provides a wonderful opportunity for the CBE to demonstrate flood mitigation on a heritage building.
- It's true that no 88 year old building meets current building code standards, but there are many global examples of adaptive re-use that integrate new and old standards.
- Curriculum Delivery: Arguably students may be more inspired to learn and grow in a building that retains its patina of history.
- The Elbow Park community's population ebbs and flows, and a school that can accommodate a larger population would probably require a larger catchment area.
The complete report can be found here, starting on page 17: .
CHI encourages all of its members and heritage friends to advocate in favour of the school's future to your local Trustee and to request a Heritage Resource Impact Assessment (HRIA). Once it's gone it will be lost forever.Statistics: Posted by cjane — Mon Jan 06, 2014 8:10 pm
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