Olive Devaud Residence, which for the past 48 years housed Powell River’s elderly, could soon serve as homes for the city’s youth.
Sino Bright, a Beijing-based private high school and BC off-shore school, has expressed interest in seeing if the facility could be used temporarily while the school increases its numbers in Powell River, said Jay Yule, School District 47 superintendent of schools.
The school district has also expressed interest in using the facility to house homeless youth, he added. Powell River Education Support Services, an organization set up in 2008 to allow the district to enter into partnerships which support education and training, received a youth housing first grant from the federal government.
Sino Bright and School District 47 have partnered to bring Chinese students who have been studying BC curriculum in China to pursue their education in Powell River. The students currently take classes at Oceanview Education Centre and Brooks Secondary School, but the school has plans to build its own facility with dorms on land it wants to purchase from PRSC Limited Partnership.
The school signed a memorandum of understanding last fall to purchase the 100-acre parcel of land east of Brooks Secondary School to the edge of Millennium Park. But a condition on that sale is whether the land, which is within the Agricultural Land Reserve and zoned Large Lot Rural by the City of Powell River, can be developed for use as a school. “It’s something which we think is supported,” Yule said.
He added that the school was aware that the property purchase did not include the trees, and when the issue of the timber being cleared there was raised, the school was concerned that it was contentious for the community. “They want to be good citizens and support what the community wants,” Yule said. He attended a public meeting at Base Camp in April when the community started organizing around the issue.
Yule added that they know they are going to have “a stump farm and they will put a whole remediation plan in place,” when they do finally purchase the property. Yule estimates that the school itself would only require about 10 acres of land to remain clear for construction of the campus. “This is definitely a long-term plan,” he added, explaining that it would take a number of years before construction would begin to accommodate over 100 Chinese students at the school.
