Carl Safran & Connaught school redevelopment news

[newsposter]

http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/new ... d9335e74ed

Public school board building new home

David Parker
Calgary Herald

Thursday, July 24, 2008

The safety fence is up around Dr. Carl Safran School, located at 930 13th Avenue S.W., signalling the start of construction on the new Calgary Board of Education building.

The CBE owns the entire site and is keeping the former school building, which is to be restored and upgraded for its own use. Bentall Real Estate Services purchased the parking lot that faces onto 8th Street and is building a 220,000-square-foot, 10-storey office tower on it.

About 180,000 square feet will be leased to the CBE, which is planning to consolidate a number of offices into the new location, including its current head office on Macleod Trail between 5th and 6th Avenues S.E.

Gibbs Gage Architects worked closely with the CBE and Connaught Community Association to ensure the tower will be a good connector with the community as well as being a showcase for education.

A large green area has been left along 13th Avenue and a courtyard separating the office tower from the school will be a spillout area for both buildings. They will be joined at the 12th Avenue side by a glass pavilion, a dramatic space designed for use as a high-tech display area with large-screen monitors.

A community request was to have the tower transparent enough that pedestrians along the busy 8th Street corridor could still view the sandstone school.

Randy Magnussen, Bentall's executive vice-president, offered a two-storey high-glass panelled frontage that has been designated for 5,500 square feet of retail use and the south exterior of the tower is set back from the school's alignment. The building's exterior facade above the see-through panels is of green glass with punched-out brick and glass panels pulled forward on each side.

Although the CBE is the major tenant, the top floor is available for lease. There is parking underground for 350 vehicles.

The main entrance to the former school will lead into the offices for the trustees and a 100-year-old classroom, which will allow students on field trips an understanding of what it was like to be taught in Calgary a century ago.

The old gymnasium on the north side of the property is to be demolished to make way for a 5,000-square-foot multi-purpose room that will be used as the CBE board room but also be available as a community meeting room.

More green space will be landscaped on the west side of the school building -- the entire development is designed to LEED Silver standards.

Bentall Real Estate Services has 17 million square feet of development in the Calgary area with two million square feet under construction...

[newsposter]

this is where the new gym at Connaught will be built, obscuring the south facade from 13th Avenue. See previous pages of this thread for more on this and the Carl Safran project

buglugs image, www.skyscraperpage.com

[cjane]

It's Calgary's oldest sandstone school that still greets new students every fall, and the Connaught School (on 12th Avenue in the Beltline) recently celebrated its 100th birthday with students and graduates. This is a wonderful example of how our built history creates a sense of place and identity through the stories it can tell.