‘A lot of interest’: Could Indwell bid to convert another former school into housing in St. Thomas?

The City of St. Thomas is looking for developers or investors to revitalize the former Wellington Street Public School. CTV's Brent Lale reports.

The City of St. Thomas is looking for developers, community partners or investors to revitalize the former Wellington Street Public School.

“We’re putting it out to the private sector, to the public, to not-for-profits, to say, ‘Give us your best ideas for the creative, adaptive reuse of this beautiful heritage building,’” said Lisa Higgs, St. Thomas city manager.

Known as the Wellington Block, this City-owned site includes a designated heritage building constructed in 1898.

A request for Information (RFI) with an Expression of Interest (EOI) document has been sent looking for a potential range of uses including mixed-use development, residential (market or affordable), boutique hotel or hospitality, cultural or institutional uses, commercial space, and other creative adaptive reuse concepts.

“Some of the options that we’ve considered is creating multi-residential within the building itself and also maybe adding some different types of uses on the land,” added Higgs.

“Perhaps some stacked townhomes, perhaps single family but we want to provide housing.”

In the early stages of the process, there has been “a lot of interest,” according to Higgs.

One of those interested is Indwell.

“When we saw the RFI come across our desk, we’re like, ‘Okay, we should take a look at this,’” said Graham Cubitt, director of projects and development with Indwell.

The Christian charity has established a footprint in St Thomas over the past few years.

They have multiple supportive housing buildings, including a 78-unit project on Balaclava Street under construction. The Balaclava project is the conversion of a former school very similar to the Wellington Block.

“We have a number of projects now that are the adaptive reuse of older buildings and heritage buildings,” said Cubitt.

“Balaclava school is the same age as the one on Wellington. It really is amazing to see these old structures that have lived through generations come back to life”.

When Balaclava is complete, the city believes it could reach net zero homelessness.

“The amazing thing about Saint Thomas is back in 2021, when the community came together and said, ‘How can we actually end homelessness?’, a plan was set to build 150 units of supportive housing with different agencies,” added Cubitt.

“That that plan has been working. The completion of Balaclava school next year, it’s probably going to be close to being able to say we’ve functionally ended, you know, acute homelessness”.

Cubitt adds, that Wellington does not have to be supportive housing.

“With the City of Saint Thomas’s leadership, there’s real opportunities to expand the availability of new affordable options and really support the community of Saint Thomas as it grows,” said Cubitt.

Higgs believes the housing and homelessness strategy is successful because of strategic partnerships.

“We’d love to form another partnership with this property,” she said.

“We’ve had great success with indwell, with Eastwood Community Housing, with the YWCA. This is another opportunity to advance our goals and make a brighter future for everyone”.

The elementary school closed its doors in 2009 but has had a few tenants since that time.

Algoma University was there from 2012-2014, followed by the STEAM Centre, then the city of St. Thomas and it was used as a temporary homeless isolation shelter during the COVID-19 pandemic.

There was talk in 2022 about St. Joseph’s Health Care leasing the building, but that never happened.

“We’ll take a look at it from our project experience to see what’s feasible,” said Cubitt.

“It wouldn’t take us too long to figure out if Indwell should be involved. Maybe there’s somebody else in the community who would like to take the lead on an affordable housing project there. One way or another, I’d love to be involved.

The deadline for submissions is July 15. Optional site tours are scheduled for June 10 and/or June 24.