City of Toronto to buy 2 acres of David and Mary Thomson Collegiate site from school board

As published in The Scarborough Mirror, June 17 2015

Toronto Council approved a city purchase of two acres of the David and Mary Thomson Collegiate Institute lands for $4.2 million at its meeting last week.

The “city-building proposal” Scarborough Centre Councillor Michael Thompson negotiated for the property at Midland and Lawrence avenues also includes the future dedication of another 0.6 acres for parkland and a 62-space child care centre.

The Toronto District School Board says it will sell DMTCI and its neighbour, Bendale Business and Technical Institute, for development, as it builds a replacement secondary school.

People from the surrounding neighbourhoods organized a grassroots campaign to stop the sales and save their “school parks.”

Some weren’t happy last month when Thompson brought them a compromise he argued was better than nothing.

“We were never able to stop or prevent the school board, unfortunately, from going ahead with their plans,” he said in an interview this week.

Thompson said the day care, which will be part of a replacement school, is badly needed in the community, which must make the best of a bad situation.