February Update

The Limestone and District School Board (LDSB) has informed us that their funding application to the Ministry of Education for a new school in the Westbrook neighbourhood was not approved this year.

What does this mean for the land swap?

While LDSB was not successful in their funding request this cycle they are interested in continuing the conversation around the potential land swap between Westbrook Park and the current W.J. Holsgrove School. A new and larger school continues to be needed in the Westbrook neighbourhood. Having a confirmed site on which to build that new school will greatly strengthen future funding applications.

At the meeting on Nov. 20, 2024 we heard from community about the possibility of expanding Creekside Valley Park to a size that could accommodate a future school and then swapping it with the W.J. Holsgrove site instead. We have been looking further into this suggestion and unfortunately, that location will not work. The parcel of land where Creekside Valley Park will be located is not big enough to support a school. The site is also constrained on all sides by two gas lines, an existing roadway, and a provincially significant wetland. All of this means that the site can not be expanded to a size that would be able to accommodate the potential new school.

This is a big conversation with a lot of community impact and we want to ensure that we are approaching it with care and consideration for the neighbourhood. With the LDSB having now heard back on the unsuccessful funding application and with many of the City teams now being pulled heavily into the time bounded work to asses a stadium project at the Memorial Centre we are not going to move forward with the planned park disposal meeting in February. Instead, we are going to continue to work on the suggestions and questions raised at our first meeting and are committed to returning with a meeting in the spring of 2025 to continue this conversation with the community in Westbrook. We will share those meeting details once we have them confirmed.

What does this mean for Creekside Valley Park and Westbrook Park?

Given what we have learned about the inability to expand the Creekside Valley Park location to be suitable for a potential future school, we are excited to share that we will be moving forward with the Park construction as originally planned, with construction anticipated to start this summer. Updates about the park’s construction, local impacts and timelines will continue to be shared on the Creekside Valley and Westbrook Park Get Involved page. If you would like to receive project updates you can subscribe to them on that page.

The updates to Westbrook Park will remain on hold for the time being as we continue this conversation with LDSB and the community.

We would like to thank everyone who took the time to contribute to this discussion so far and look forward to providing details on the next step in the Westbrook land swap process and construction of Creekside Valley Park as they become available.

Thank you,