Provincial funding finally secured to finish the Au Coeur d’Ottawa school expansion

Funding delays have reshaped the plans for Au Coeur School’s enrolment will more than double the student body from 224 to 489 children, but construction of new housing adjacent to the Deschâtelets Building could complicate completion of the school site

JOHN DANCE

It’s now official: the provincial government is funding the completion of the Au Coeur d’Ottawa School in the Deschâtelets Building in the middle of Greystone Village.

The school will have substantially greater enrolment than originally planned and the two top floors of the heritage structure will be used by the school, not for affordable seniors’ housing as had been proposed.

“Once the tendering process is completed, construction will begin as soon as the contractor can mobilize,” Marc Bertrand, the director of education for the Conseil des écoles catholiques du Centre-Est (CECCE), told The Mainstreeter. The target “best case” for partial occupancy of the new school is January 2027, with full occupancy for the 2027-2028 school year.

It’s been a slow process acquiring the necessary funding. The Deschâtelets Building was bought by the French Catholic school board from The Regional Group, the developer of Greystone Village, in 2020 with a planned opening of the new school in the fall of 2022.

In the first phase of the conversion of the old residence of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, CECCE removed all asbestos and brought the old structure to current building standards. That work was completed in 2023 and the board has been waiting up until now for the Ministry of Education’s funding to allow completion of the project. The original funding of about $5.2 million allowed the purchase of the large building and the completion of the first phase. The amount of new funding has not yet been made public.

In the meantime, parents of Au Coeur d’Ottawa students attending the temporary accommodation in the De Mazenod school at the corner of Main and Graham and in Old Town Hall, have grown increasingly impatient with what they regard as substandard facilities.

“After much lobbying and letter writing by the parent council, a group of four parents sent a demand letter to the Minister in the spring indicating we would consider formal legal action if the funding was further delayed, but thankfully never had to take that step,” says Monique Moreau, one of the parents. “For now, we are continuing to monitor the situation, relieved to be able to take our foot off the gas for now.”

Originally, the school was to have 351 students from kindergarten to grade six. Now, there will be 489, about 40 percent more. In addition, as previously planned, there will be a childcare centre for a total of 39 children.

Currently, Au Coeur d’Ottawa has 224 students, Bertrand says, noting the enrolment has grown from 140 just five years ago. He says the enrolment is now limited by the size of the temporary facilities and that enrolment projections mean the larger capacity of the facilities in the Deschâtelets Building will be required. And if enrolment were ever to exceed the projection, there will be the potential of adding classrooms on the fifth floor.

Ottawa Community Housing Corporation (OCHC), an arm’s-length organization owned by the City of Ottawa, originally proposed to have 30 units in the upper floors of Deschâtelets but this plan is now cancelled. OCHC has no social housing in OOE and, with the cancellation of the Deschâtelets units, there are no plans for building any here.

The upcoming construction phase for Au Coeur d’Ottawa will create the classrooms and the daycare facilities within Deschâtelets.  A subsequent phase will create the proposed community centre in part of the ground floor of the building and a new adjacent building with a gymnasium and other community centre facilities just to the north of Deschâtelets.

The City of Ottawa will be leasing space from CECCE for the community centre portion of the project and it is now negotiating the related arrangements with the school board. These negotiations had been on hold until it was clear that CECCE was actually going to be funded to complete the school.

A complicating factor in completing the project is that there is limited construction staging space, particularly with the construction of Regional Group’s Forecourt Towns and its large Phase 3 buildings to the east and south of Deschâtelets.   The last piece of development will be Forecourt Park, immediately in front of Deschâtelets. It will not proceed until Regional and the school board have completed their work.