New school for downtown Mississauga is part of mayor’s plan

Plans for a new school that would be located in Mississauga’s downtown core by Square One are being floated by the city’s mayor.

An urban school housing kindergarten through Grade 8 students that would anchor a larger development of two residential highrise towers, for example, is something Mayor Carolyn Parrish says she’ll push for as part of her overall vision for the City Centre area of Canada’s seventh-largest city.

As she looks to spearhead a revitalization of the downtown area, the mayor also envisions a 7,500-seat soccer stadium — at an estimated cost of $32 million — in the not-so-distant future.

The new mayor, who took the reins after winning a byelection in June to fill the vacancy left by the departing Bonnie Crombie, told INsauga.com in a recent interview she wants to “fix” the city core that has grown dramatically in the past couple of decades around city hall, the Living Arts Centre and Ontario’s biggest shopping mall (second-largest in Canada).

“The downtown is boring. We have nothing exciting going on here until the festivals start (in spring and summer),” Parrish said from her office inside the Mississauga Civic Centre. “The City Centre has languished for a very long time; nothing’s happened here.”

Mayor Carolyn Parrish says it’s time to build an urban school in Mississauga’s downtown core.

If Parrish’s plan for a downtown school comes to fruition — and it’s not yet a done deal as she must first sell the idea to the Peel District School Board — people will eventually see fewer school buses clogging up the roads around city hall and the dozens of surrounding highrises.

“This downtown area has orange (school) buses all the time; all the kids are being bused out of the downtown and they should be able to walk to a school in the downtown — if you’re a real city,” she said, noting morning drivers in the City Centre can’t move around without seeing loads of school buses in the 30 or 60 minutes prior to 9 a.m.

“And if you look at the mobs of kids at all the corners (where the school bus pickups take place), you realize we’ve got a huge number of families here, with kids … I think an urban school, it’s time.”

Parrish said the idea of an urban school has already worked well in the St. Lawrence Market area of Toronto, where such a facility was built in the early 1990s.

Province would pay for the school, mayor says

Given plans in Mississauga’s downtown core call for an influx of highrise rental housing that’s expected to bring more young families to the area, a school would also work well there, the mayor contends.

“What young people need is a school close by, they need restaurants and entertainment so they don’t have to go down to Toronto,” said Parrish.

If Parrish is successful in getting the school board on board with her plan, the rest of the pieces should, she hopes, fall into place.

The mayor said the City of Mississauga could sell a three-acre parcel of downtown land to a developer, who would then build the school and adjoining towers. Parrish said such a plan would see the provincial government pay for the school.

But first, getting support from public school officials is a must.

“Talking to the school board about it is going to be difficult because they still envision” that six or so acres of land is needed to build a school in Mississauga.