While Barrie Central students were out for March Break, their school went up for sale.
The MLS listing became live March 17 – St. Patrick’s Day – for the 7.4-acre site on the west edge of downtown, which also includes the land occupied by Prince of Wales Public School.
Listed at $4,962,000 by Sutton Group Incentive Realty broker Shannon MacIntyre, the property is zoned commercial and features frontage on Dunlop Street West and Bradford Street.
“It’s a unique seven acres in downtown. That’s pretty awesome,” said MacIntyre, who noted she will accept offers until April 15 at 3 p.m. Then school board officials will open the bids and offer prospective buyers – several or possibly just one – opportunity to examine the site and continue to negotiate.
“This is a way to manage all the eyes on this property, to make sure students are not affected by showings and inspections. We’re sensitive to the fact it’s an active school.
“Anything we’ve sold before for the board has been inactive. We’re ICI specialists and at the end of the day, we hope we can do well.”
The asking price is just more than $1 million below what the Simcoe County District School Board valued the site at in November 2013, when it issued a request for proposals for Barrie Central and Prince of Wales. Back then, the board valued the 5.7-acre Central site at $4.68 million and the smaller Prince of Wales site at $900,000 to $1.3 million.
Price was a factor in the board’s rejection of a proposal from a group that included Georgian College and the YMCA of Simcoe/Muskoka in 2014, as well as EDEV, the real estate development company that oversaw redevelopment of the Toronto Stockyards and the West Donlands properties.
The school board has since then acted its plan to close Central in June 2016.
MacIntyre said the list price resulted from a third-party appraisal and the site could feature residential as well as commercial.
The site must be sold according to a provincial process. Georgian College and York University, as well as the Simcoe Muskoka Catholic District School Board, had also passed on purchasing the property. Barrie had the option to buy the site, but it ran out in April 2015.
