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The old St. Patrick’s High School site should be preserved for urban farming and a public park.

That school of thought spurred 700 signatories to petition Halifax regional council last week.

“We want the space converted for public use, into a community garden and food forest,” said Omri Haiven, a former St. Pat’s student who is part of a grassroots group called the Quinpool Commoning Project.

“Halifax is one of the most food insecure cities in Canada and that seems to be the solution – have gardens for people to grow their own food and to learn from each other and build community ties.”

Historically a Roman Catholic public school, St. Patrick’s opened its doors at the corner of Quinpool Road and Robie Street in 1954. The school closed in 2007 and was demolished in 2015.

The problem with the Commoning Project’s green-space aspirations is that the 1.3-hectare plot of land has in the past been estimated to be valued at $7 million. That number has probably grown since demolition day and council has been counting on the funds that can be accrued from the sale of the property.

“The challenge is that we have that designated to be in the budget for sale and we’re counting on that money to go into the reserves for a whole bunch of capital projects,” said Deputy Mayor Tony Mancini, councillor for Dartmouth East and Burnside.

“We’ve got more green space probably than any other municipality in the country. ... I’m all about the green space but that’s a tough one. That’s a very valuable property. Here we are in a budget year that we are talking about raising taxes. It would be tough not to count on that money.”

Value is in the eye of the beholder, according to Haiven.

“That value works both ways,” he said. “A lot of the time because we are used to the developer speculating on things, we only see it in terms of the immediate value of selling off land. ... It’s invaluable land, really, right in the heart of Halifax, it’s this beautiful large green space and once we sell it, we’re never getting it back.”

Having attended St. Pat’s in the school’s farewell years, Haiven said the location is an important space to showcase what Halifax has to offer.

“There are condos in every city in North America,” he said. “What makes us unique is that we have community spaces that are creative, that are actually forward thinking. If we were to simply sell it off to the highest bidder, then we are sacrificing a space that is never going to come back for the sake of short-term money and we’re not thinking about future generations.”

Gabrielle Fraser, another member of the Quinpool Commoning group, works with children in a volunteer program that exposes them to free play in nature.

“We’ve seen a lot of decrease in attention-related behaviours and a huge increase in their confidence, their confidence in themselves,” Fraser said. “The interaction with others is amazing to watch.”

The same goes for seniors, some of whom live in the nearby St. Vincent’s Guest House on Windsor Street.

“Their moods coming in from working in the garden, they just glow,” Fraser said.

Fraser said a group of volunteers has been maintaining the garden space and could continue to do that under the auspices of HRM staff should the location remain a community green and garden space.

Haiven, who describes himself as a farmer, said he lived in the area through his school years.

“I grew up in the area and went to high school there and up to a couple of years ago, I lived just a couple of blocks away from there,” Haiven said. “It’s pretty close to my heart.

“We basically have 10 raised beds there right now. We just went ahead and did it. There are many different things that were grown there this summer. Currently they are planted with garlic but we’re sort of waiting on more infrastructure and maybe a permit from the city to go ahead and expand that. We saw the immediate need with Common Roots shutting down to convert the space as soon as possible and to kind of lead the way since it doesn’t seem council is willing to do that.”

Common Roots Urban Farm is located on the old Queen Elizabeth High School property on Robie Street, across the Willow Tree intersection from the St. Pat’s site. The Common Roots group received approval this fall to maintain its location until next spring but the adjacent Halifax Infirmary hospital site will use the Common Roots land for its planned expansion.

Mancini is aware of the push toward moving the Common Roots project over to St. Pat’s but he said even though the city seeded the St. Pat’s location to make it green and more attractive, a permanent green space was never the goal.

“It was never intended to be a park,” Mancini said. “It’s a pretty valuable spot. I haven’t heard anything else from my (council) colleagues other than that.”

Haiven said the location is “definitely a hot commodity.”

“We’re trying to show that the type of thinking that has informed the policies that have led to this incredible boom in condos, many of which aren’t populated with people or are just speculative, it’s not sustainable for our city,” he said. “It’s especially not sustainable on the peninsula when you have a natural bottleneck. There is a lot of room outside of the peninsula for highrises and medium density has been proven to be a very human-scale option for having as many people living in Halifax as possible while preserving quality of life.”