The Protestant school board has agreed to sell 70 Arlington Dr. to Habitat For Humanity for $840,000 but the deal is subject to the land being rezoned for residential development.
The purchase price of $840,000 has been donated by the City of St. Albert, contingent upon Habitat securing land. In essence, the city is buying the land and donating it to Habitat for affordable housing.
The three-acre parcel is an empty field that backs onto the two-acre Attwood Park. The school district owns the land and pays about $10,000 a year in property taxes on it. The district acquired the land from Qualico Developments in 1974, but later realized the city wasn’t growing to the south and it didn’t need another school in the area.
The board paid a nominal fee for the land and paid for some servicing, said Michael Brenneis, the district’s secretary-treasurer.
The school district has been unsuccessfully trying to sell 70 Arlington Dr. for more than a decade. The district has twice had sales of the parcel scuttled by public resistance to rezoning.
In 2005 public pressure caused city council to reject a rezoning bid that would have allowed for a planned 80-bed assisted living complex. In 2000 council rejected a proposed development of 30 bungalow-style duplexes.
In 1994 the school board formed a joint committee with neighbours and reached a compromise to have a church use the site but that deal also fell through. That year the board donated two acres of its original site to the city for use as a park.
The board isn’t prepared to donate any more land, said chair Morag Pansegrau.
“It’s an asset that we have. Our obligation is to give the best possible education to our students,” she said. “It would not be prudent as a board for us to not use the asset, the money from it, to look after our students.”
