The former CAPE and St. Louis School building has been purchased by a local developer with the goal of creating an apartment building.--News Photo Collin Gallant
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant
An historic school in the Flats is set to be redeveloped into premier apartment suites by a local company, the News has learned.
Cambridge Developments has purchased the 1912-era school building located on Allowance Avenue and Balmoral Street in the River Flats that was listed for sale last spring.
That sale was approved by special meeting of the Catholic Board of Education, where an offer of $550,000 was accepted, along with a closing and possession date in early November.
Joel McNally, of Cambridge and related McNally Associates, Ltd. engineering firm, said the plan for the structure is to retain many architectural features while converting it to multi-family housing. The project is similar to the firms reworking of the Dairy Building on Fifth Street, SE, near downtown, he said.
“The plan is to preserve as much of the exiting building as possible and convert the classrooms into apartments,” said McNally. “It’s a really good project at a really good time for us.”
The building was most recently used as CAPE School facility before that group moved to a newly renovated space attached to Medicine Hat High School.
It was previously the original St. Louis School in the Catholic system before a building swap saw St. Louis re-established in a former Montreal Street public school house several blocks south.
The asking price had been $609,000 for the 19,000 square-foot building that had several more modern additions.
It sits on 0.8 acres, including a playground.
It is the third central school site to be sold in Medicine Hat in the last eight years.
The former Earl Kitchener School was redeveloped into a private residence after no public group submitted bids for the property on the Southeast Hill.
Riverside School was the focus of a conditional sale to Covenant Health toward a plan to build a new seniors care facility.
The Central Park school site that was most recently the francophone Ecole les Cypres facility was demolished last winter, but there is no immediate timeline for disposing the vacant lot.
