Calgary's public school board has finally sold the former Albert Park school property, netting $3.2 million that a top official has said will offset some of the cost of its new headquarters.
Carlisle Developments plans to construct medium-density housing on the nearly two-hectare site in the city's southeast.
A 2008 deal to sell the property at 1317 27th St. S.E. fell through when the purchaser couldn't fulfil all of its obligations.
The Calgary Board of Education has said it has yet to complete the sale of two other surplus properties.
Calgary Arts Development and the Calgary Foundation asked City Hall last summer for $5 million to help purchase King Edward School for use as an "arts incubator."
A property report based on land titles documents indicates the vacant building at 30th Avenue and 17th Street S.W. was sold last November for $8.4 million, but in an e-mail response to questions last week an unidentified official with CBE's media relations department said "arrangements around the finalizing of the sale process are underway."
Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk has said he has conditionally-approved the CBE's sale of its former Macleod Trail headquarters at a fair market value in today's depressed market.
Approved by trustees behind closed doors in late November and expected to be finalized in the next few months, that deal follows a failed attempt earlier in the year to sell the property by public tender at a minimum bid price of $40 million.
Neither the sale price nor the identity of the purchaser has been released.
Frank Coppinger, CBE's superintendent of facilities and environmental services, has said the proceeds of the sales will yield funds to help pay for the board's new head office.
While the proceeds of these transactions may enable the board to pay back the balance of the approximately $30 million it borrowed to renovate and add to the historic sandstone school that now houses trustees, it won't begin to cover the $285 million in rent and operating costs it must pay over two decades for an adjacent 10-storey office building that is the new headquarters for board bureaucrats.
The Albert Park facility was closed in 2005 after a new school was built in nearby Radisson Park as part of a public-private initiative.
CBE officials were not available Monday to speak about the property transactions.
mmcclure@ calgaryherald.com
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