Sudbury encourages use of vacant schools to address housing shortage

With an urgent need for more housing in Greater Sudbury, converting vacant schools into residential properties could be a big part of the solution.

With a need for more housing in Greater Sudbury, vacant schools could be part of the answer.

Three school buildings in the Valley are currently up for sale on the GovDeal Auction website.

École Notre-Dame on Dennie Street in Hanmer is listed at $939,000; École Ste Thérèse on St. Therese Street in Val Therese is listed at $593,500; and École St-Joseph, on St. Anthony Street in Hanmer is listed at $491,000.

All are former school properties owned by Conseil Scolaire Catholique Nouvelon, and all three could be developed for desperately needed housing in Greater Sudbury.

Sudbury’s Housing Supply Strategy says 112 rental units are needed each year for the next 30 years “to address that gap in the housing supply,” said Melissa Riou, the city’s director of planning services.

While the city won’t buy the property, it offers incentives to developers to convert the properties into housing.

“The city takes a supportive role,” Riou said.

She said the city has updated its zoning bylaw to allow institutional properties to be converted to residential without having to go through the process of rezoning.

Plus, the city offers incentive programs through its community improvement plans to encourage adaptive reuse and development of sites.

“The incentives that we have in place apply to a broad geography,” Riou said.

“They’re not limited strictly to the adaptive reuse of school sites, but allow for a broad range of adaptive reuse or for new development, as well as on existing vacant sites across the city.”

Peter Nault knows all about renovating a former school into housing.

The president of Devla Properties said the company purchased the former Bernadette Catholic Elementary School on Auger Street in New Sudbury and created a housing development called Stonebrook Suites.

“There’s lots of land here, which is what we were looking for,” Nault said.

“Above and beyond the school, there’s quite a bit of land that we developed -- three additional buildings behind the school and the location was fantastic for development.”

Stonebrooke Suites is a 74-unit housing development, mostly for seniors. Twenty of those units were once part of the school, which was closed in 2015.

It was the location that Nault said first appealed to him for the development, then the size of land available on the property.

“The planning process as far as trying to design the layouts to fit inside the school was a little bit challenging,” he said.

“Other than that, it was fairly straightforward.”

The development even used the old gym. More development is underway further back on the property, slated for completion in December.

There are still a few units left at Stonebrook Suites, but there is a waiting list. Nault said the marketing team will hold an open house later this month.

Devla Properties is also developing more housing sites elsewhere in Greater Sudbury.

“We’re developing more in Chelmsford presently right now,” Nault said.

“We also have some land in the South End that we’re proposing to do some development in the near future.”

While he did look at other vacant schools, Nault said the condition of those buildings meant they weren’t feasible for development plans.

However, he said he’s not opposed to buying and developing a vacant school into housing again. It just needs to be the right opportunity.