Winnipeg Construction X

[CoryB]

St Peter's is the defacto Filipino Roman Catholic church in Winnipeg. My understanding is the demographic is one that is more likely to support the church and also invest in their children, such as supporting a school. It is also one of the communities growing in Winnipeg (and Manitoba).

While I haven't seen the St Peter's plans if I was asked to put together a quick plan I would likely start by looking at making a 9-12 school first. There are lots of Nursery-PreK-K-8 spaces in the city currently but there are only four Catholic schools offering 9-12, St Marys, St Pauls, St Mauric and St Boniface Diocesan. Those same high schools also pull in money from outside the Catholic community even from families that are not members of the Catholic church. That said a quality high school is going to be significantly more expensive to build because of the larger gym, the science labs, the sports fields, etc that would be part of it.

As a point of reference, about 15 years ago the cost to build the net-new West Kildonan Collegiate was publicly stated as $15.7 million. It would likely be a comparable size to a new Catholic high school.

Costing Source

[esquire]

^ I was a Catholic school board member for several years and I can tell you that fundraising for capital improvements is a struggle for most schools. St. Paul's and St. Mary's have a fairly well heeled alumni base to tap into so their facilities are gorgeous, but for other schools it's a challenge to say the least even for fairly basic renovations of what's already there. Most are operating from fairly antiquated buildings. St. Peter's might be the only parish capable of pulling off a new school simply because of the combination of sheer size and demographics where families there are fairly young on average and want to make a school happen.

I know that a Catholic high school in North Winnipeg is a long-standing dream for many in town, but with the very high costs that you touched on it's hard to see it happening unless someone steps up big the way that Chipman took the lead on establishing Gonzaga Middle School.

[CoryB]

It is fairly open knowledge that recent immigrant families in northwest Winnipeg send a fair number of their children to St Pauls, St Marys and St Boniface for high school. If St Peter's could capture those students there is a fair bit of tuition money available. It also isn't a secret that especially St Marys and St Pauls have more potential students that spaces each year suggesting there is current unmet demand for space, both from within the Catholic community and outside of it.

I sort of wonder if someone sat down and crunched numbers on projected enrollments, operating costs, tuition, donations and mortgage costs over say a 20 year period how close might the school be?

Doing some quick numbers, if you say the cost to build the school is $20 million and the Filipino population in Winnipeg is 78,000, to raise $1 million in donations a year would be about $13 a person, or $52 per family of four. That would pay off the principal of the build and definitely seems within reach. That would then leave the tuition to cover the interest and other operational costs.

That said a traditional financial institution is not going to giving a mortgage based on projected donations over a 20 year period. That said the larger Catholic church organization could easily front the full $20 million cost and put it on the wider Winnipeg diocesan to guarantee the mortgage. Trust me, the internals of the Catholic church structure very much have taxation like structures on all the smaller communities and could definitely financing a school or a large downtown tower with this type of financing structure. The challenge is more making the presentation to the internal stakeholders with the funds to get the approval.

[esquire]

I notice that fencing is starting to go up for the seniors housing complex that is planned for the SW corner of Bishop Grandin Blvd and River Rd.

[borkborkbork]

it feels like manitoba has a much more american style school system than many other provinces -- lots of these private and religious schools funded partially by tax money (charter style), school board boundaries where different neighbourhoods have "good schools" vs not, etc., lots of inequities in funding between school divisions/schools.

[buzzg]

I'm not an expert but I don't think we're that much different than anywhere else in Canada The big issue in Winnipeg (that leads to all the inequities) is that we have a bunch of school divisions – often just one school board.

It's been obvious for years we need to change that. Winnipeg should have just two school divisions/boards: and English and a French. Realistically one would be best, but there's no way the French community would give up having control over "their" schools.

[Winnipeg Grump]

Originally Posted by borkborkbork

it feels like manitoba has a much more american style school system than many other provinces -- lots of these private and religious schools funded partially by tax money (charter style), school board boundaries where different neighbourhoods have "good schools" vs not, etc., lots of inequities in funding between school divisions/schools.

A couple of BIG differences here.

1. In Canada, while there are those on the right who'd love to see more of a charter school model (see our current Ed. Minister, for example), that isn't a view shared by most Canadians.

2. Unlike the US, Canada funds our public system quite well. Every system can be improved, but I'd take our model over the Americans any day of the week. It doesn't take long to track down someone who's gone to school in the States to get a sense for how far behind they can be. Trust me.

3. Manitoba is actually a bit of an outlier in how we handle parochial schools. Most provinces have a fully-funded Catholic system in addition to the public model, and 'then' the other schools run as private schools. Here, you have the public schools and the independent schools, which receive 'some' funding, which is a debate I'm not getting into.

4. The Pallister government wants to move to a single model for funding education. All of the money for schools comes from Broadway (no more municipal collection of education taxes) and a single contract negotiated with all teachers in the province. You'd see 'some' kind of model where the number of local school boards shrinks massively and loses any taxation authority.

[peg]

Even larger crane going up on Edmonton St. today.

[bomberjet]

That's a really big crane. And they're removing the paneling all the way up that one side of the building. Looks like at least a mid rise going up there. I guess that's where the permanent residence is going.

[plrh]

No hearings or anything from the city before construction? Or is that big crane there for stucco repair?

[drew]

I guess they are just going to crane away and remove the precast concrete parkade piece by piece? That's a lot of temporary shoring in there

[Biff]

I love when it takes a crane to build a crane. My kind of construction.

[drew]

They should just use that TNS tower crane sitting idle for the foreseeable future. It might reach.

[prairiedog007]

Must be a bunch of pre-cast going up for a heavy duty crane like that, notice all the temporary shoring in parking garage level 1

[bomberjet]

Need. Construction. Cam. Getting spoiled over here.

[Biff]

The new residence will really fill in the gap on Edmonton. That whole area Hargrave, Carlton, and Edmonton around Graham will be something in a couple of years. Hopefully it will keep radiating out from there.

[pegcityfan]

Originally Posted by buzzg

I'm not an expert but I don't think we're that much different than anywhere else in Canada The big issue in Winnipeg (that leads to all the inequities) is that we have a bunch of school divisions – often just one school board.

It's been obvious for years we need to change that. Winnipeg should have just two school divisions/boards: and English and a French. Realistically one would be best, but there's no way the French community would give up having control over "their" schools.

I lived through the french school system (pre & post DFSM). DSFM was created to the benefit of the curriculum. A Catholic wouldn't exactly be the best to write a curriculum for Jewish schools. It's no different. Trust me I experienced it.

Also note that french schools, french milieu & french immersion schools are continually growing in demand while english schools have and are in decline.

[Biff]

Hey Viking, can you design a building like this for Winnipeg? I know architects are artists and don't like to copy others work but...

9 DeKalb in Brooklyn (my favorite building going up right now)



or it's knockoff in Rotterdam which is more suited to Winnipeg (smaller).

https://www.floornature.com/powerhouse-company-works-collaboration-shop-architects-offic-15939/



...or at least the Wells fargo Center in Minny

[dmacc]

^I agree, TV is directly to blame for not ensuring Winnipeg gets more towers and in turn why there are so many surface lots downtown.

[trueviking]

I can easily design it....but you have to find someone to pay for it!