A century-old school building in Calgary’s Bridgeland-Riverside neighbourhood is being transformed into an after-school childcare space, easing years of uncertainty over the historic property’s future.
The 104-year-old arts and crafts style building — located near 1st Avenue and 6th Street N.E. — has sat empty for roughly 15 years. The City of Calgary declined a previous proposal to buy the site from the Calgary Board of Education, raising fears within the community around the building’s fate in the event of a private sale.
A Calgary-based childcare operator is now leasing the space from the school board for a new location set to open Oct. 1.
Wee Wild Ones founder and CEO Chloe Dusser said she’s “excited and proud” of her company’s partnership with the public school board.
“This felt like a perfect fit — to provide much-needed after-school care and bring purpose to the building,” she says of the partnership.
“I’m a huge advocate for not demolishing buildings … and using what we have,” she adds. “Nothing needs to be shiny and new.”
Renovations on the building’s interior started last September and left the building’s original design, layout and essence intact, Dusser says.
The childcare operator worked closely with the city during the permitting process, Dusser says, to bring the building up to code while preserving as much of the interior as possible.
“There’s even … some of the original doors, a lot of the original chalkboards and all of the original molding,” she says of the preservation efforts. “It was a really exciting project.”
In an emailed statement, the CBE said its intention was to find a new purpose for the building after determining it had no use for the site. Having a childcare operator take over the space seemed like “a natural consideration,” the school board said. “It will benefit families at our nearby Riverside School, as well as the community in general.”
Community members who previously expressed concerns about the building’s future were pleased to hear about the most recent development in the school-house saga.
“The Riverside Bungalow is a real landmark in our community,” says Deb Lee, heritage director on the board of the Bridgeland-Riverside Community Association. “We’ve been concerned about it over the years, just kind of sitting there.”
Lee’s concerns mounted after the city declined to buy the building.
“We weren’t sure who was going to buy that school building and whether they would save it or not,” she explains, adding she has “nothing but positive things to say” about Dusser moving into the space. “It’s amazing what Chloe has done and intends to do with (the building).”
After years spent advocating to preserve the building, Heritage Calgary executive director Josh Traptow also expressed support for the move.
“I think it’s a very positive development,” Traptow says. “Bridgeland-Riverside is getting much-needed daycare and a heritage building is having a new lease on life through adaptive reuse.”
While listed on the city’s Inventory of Evaluated Historic Resources, the building is not a legally protected as a designated municipal heritage site.
Built in 1920 to accommodate an influx of new arrivals to the city after the First World War, the Riverside Bungalow School was one of three identical schools built at the same time. The other two — Cliff Bungalow School and Tuxedo Park Elementary School — are still standing.
The schoolhouse is the only remaining structure from a grouping of three schools that formed an educational hub in Bridgeland in the 1900s. One of these schools, Riverside Public School, was demolished in 1966 after a devastating fire. It stood on what is now parking for the new Riverside School across the street.
Set to open Oct. 1, the sixth Wee Wild Ones location will accommodate 100 children for after-school care, all of whom are students from Riverside School, Dusser says.
With all spots at the new location already spoken for, Dusser says it is difficult trying to keep up with the high demand for childcare services in the city.
As part of ongoing efforts to satisfy this need, Dusser says renovations are already underway on a similar remediation project at the Balmoral School grounds in northwest Calgary — another Wee Wild Ones location that will offer childcare and an after-school program.
“There’s just a tremendous amount of pressure to keep challenging affordability in the childcare industry and (have) high standards of operation,” Dusser says, adding “there’s this sense (that) we’re not really solving the problem if we end up with enormous waitlists with an opening.
“There’s still so much work to do.”