Oceanview Middle School has seen many reconfigurations over the years, but when its doors closed in June many people wondered what would happen to the building.
Powell River Board of Education trustee and former principal of Oceanview Doug Skinner said he and many current teachers who were former Oceanview students are delighted to see the building being put to new use.
Over the years, declining enrolment in School District 47 has pushed the board to consider the organization of the community’s schools. With less money from the province, it was time to be decisive. School board trustees opted to relocate Oceanview students to Brooks Secondary School. The move made Brooks a full high school with grades eight through 12. Last year Oceanview grade nines moved and this September grade eights followed them.
Although the Oceanview building is only in its mid-30s, young for a public building and well before its expiry date, the school board was informed by an engineer, brought in to do a high level assessment of the building’s condition, that there were some large problems with the building. It would need an investment if it were to be used for something else. If the board didn’t want to put the money into bringing it back, money would have to be spent to knock it down. Either way there would be a cost.
“For roughly $700,000 you can tear down a school to get raw land,” said Steve Hopkins, secretary treasurer for the school district. “What we looked at was tearing it down or seeing what we could get for $700,000 in renovations and then what we could use it for.”
The focus of the renovations has been on the outside of the building, fixing the siding and wooden window frames. Oceanview’s roof design didn’t incorporate overhangs, so the wood siding took the brunt of winter storms. Large portions of the building’s wood siding were rotten because the siding had been nailed directly to the plywood wall, Hopkins said. To reduce the chance of siding rot, the renovations included stripping the siding and incorporating a rain screen system to allow a gap between wood siding and wall. When it rains, the siding will have the chance to dry on both sides instead of trapping the moisture against the wall.
The school district plans to invest $1.4 million in renovations over the next three to five years but has plans to recoup the money. It will save money on programs currently operating in leased buildings around the city and charge rents to community groups to use the space.
“This is the economic part of the decision,” said Hopkins. “The hair salon and the Brooks Offsite program are in leased buildings in the community. The Brooks Offsite has been there for decades. By moving [the program] into Oceanview we save the rent and help to revitalize that space. We’re thinking of this as Oceanview Education Centre.”
While the school’s sectional design up a hillside worked against it as a middle school, Hopkins thinks it will be well-suited for its new use. “The 1970s’ West Coast design didn’t create a good flow for a school, but the sections of the building lend themselves well to independent yet related programs,” he said. “The hair salon has its own area but it fits in the hub.”
The dual credit carpentry program, which is a partnership between Vancouver Island University (VIU) and the school district, has also moved into Oceanview and it runs out of the lower shop area. Hopkins said a few programs currently established in the school board office, like Auditory Outreach, will also relocate to the new campus and give them the ability to manage the facility more like a school. The Distance Learning program, which supports parents who chose more of a home-school environment for their children, will move into the old library of Oceanview. “It creates a space for the instructors and a bit of a learning centre for some of those families to come to borrow resources to do tutorial-type work,” he said.
With Powell River VIU campus and the new Westview Elementary School just adjacent to Oceanview, Hopkins said there is the opportunity to create a strong educational hub area for Powell River.
“We’re not looking to compete for commercial tenants,” said Hopkins. “It’s really just organizations in the community that we already partner with, that struggle for space or funding.”
Westwind Learning Centre is one company that has moved into the space. Westwind runs a variety of after-school programs including tutoring, math basics clinics and helping preschool-aged children work on their ABCs.
“It’s a good location because it’s in a familiar location for the community and it’s already set up like a school,” said Rachelle Warman, owner of Westwind. “We’re definitely going to be able to open up more programming to the community.”
Westwind also has a partnership with VIU to help with English as a Second Language (ESL) classes.
“We’re trying to create a campus feel here,” for the ESL students, said Warman. “We do part of the daily classes and then they go down to VIU to do other classes.”
The digital film school, currently run out of Brooks, is relocating to Oceanview. This, coupled with the Powell River Film Festival office moving to Oceanview, means that students who want to learn about film and filmmaking will have the opportunity to be around Jan Padgett and Michelle Hignell who organize the annual film festival.
“The rent is really reasonable and we’re a non-profit, so that makes a big difference,” said Hignell. “We serve the school kids so I think it’s a fitting relationship.”
Padgett said that after the Powell River Regional Economic Development office moved to share space with Tourism Powell River there wasn’t any space available for the film festival offices. “We didn’t need much space over the summer, but now we do,” she said. “This [space] is great and hopefully it will be permanent.”
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