The Edmonton Journal writing about empty school sites being reconverted:
EDMONTON - For about 15 years, Jean Deslauriers has watched the weeds grow on the field across the street, where a school was supposed to be built.Okay, first off, if you look at this house for sale across the street from this site (more on that later) you see this neighbourhood was built in 1997. So already a massive factual hole has been built into the story: for barely a decade this "older suburb" has been luring kids to the upcoming schoolground.
There are two other empty fields like it in Castle Downs, he says, and most people know by now there won’t be schools on them. That’s been disappointing for families who bought homes assuming they’d be close to a school, says Deslauriers, president of the Cumberland Oxford community league.
But if the field can’t be home to a school, Deslauriers has another idea.
“Why don’t they just give us a schoolyard and we’ll build an indoor soccer facility,” says Deslauriers, an ambitious fundraiser and dedicated community volunteer.
“If I could get a schoolyard, that would be terrific.”
Maybe, just maybe, Deslauriers’s dream could happen. The city has a new strategy to find better uses for this vacant public land, and recreation facilities are now one possibility.
Dozens of surplus school sites dot older suburbs such as Castle Downs. It took the city a few years of negotiations with school boards to come up with a new agreement to deal the land that boards were reluctant to give back to the city.
Secondly, its only dumb luck that I found this house. Here's a screenshot of the article in case they change it (click to enlarge):
128th Avenue and 149th Street? Funny, I don't remember seeing a school site there...
I mean, that's two giant crocks of shit from the get-go, before even getting into the meat of the article. At that point, why bother reading anymore? No wonder rumours say the Journal is close to being shut down...
