Around two years ago, a group of Moncton business people and community members came together to save the old Moncton High School.

Their proposed plan is to turn the old building, which has been vacant since January 2015, into a combination of commercial business space and a centre for the performing arts. The group calls themselves MH Renaissance Inc, which is now a registered non-profit with the mission to bring their plan to fruition. The group is made up of:

Dennis Cochrane: Former mayor of Moncton and member of parliament for the city. He was also the leader of the New Brunswick Progressive Conservative Party from 1991-1995 and served as the deputy minister of Education in Nova Scotia in 1999. He also served as interim president and vice-chancellor of St. Thomas University from 2010 to 2011.

James Lockyer: A lawyer, law professor and former MLA for Moncton West. He’s been involved with a number of community initiatives including Murial McQueen Fergusson Foundation and the Greater Moncton YMCA. An instrument-rated private pilot, he is the president of the local branch of the Canadian Owners and Pilots Association’s (COPA) and a former member of the board of directors of the Moncton Flight College. He is vice-president of the Moncton Aero Club Inc.

John Corazza: Owner of Cora Management Group, a general contracting and construction management services company, based in Moncton.

Joe Tippett: A professional engineer and real estate developer He’s spent around forty years of his professional career working in the consulting, construction and real estate development environment throughout Atlantic Canada.

Cochrane, Locker, Corazza and Tippett are the four main people behind the project who do most of the planning and negotiating. But there are also several other individuals involved with the proposed project including Susan Chalmers Gauvin, Len Lockhart, Brian Cormier, Karen Teed and Brent Mazerolle.

“We became concerned that if someone or some group doesn’t do something, the building could possibly be bought and torn down for the purposes of the land and so on,” says Dennis Cochrane.

“That’s when we got together and put together an organization to structure a plan and a vision as to what we thought would work.”

The idea is to turn the classroom portion of the old high school into to rentable commercial property while turning the school’s auditorium and gymnasium portion into a centre for performing arts.

“It was really meant so once it got up and running, it would take the complex no government money to support the centre for the performing arts because it would be supported by the revenues from the other side,” Cochrane says.

“It was one of the features of the project that the province particularly liked. We made it clear to both the province and the city that we need capital money from them, obviously. Particularly the province. It’s their building.”

Though the finished product would be self-sustaining, it would need some capital funding to get off the ground. The entire project would cost about $22 million to complete. Cochrane says they are looking for $5.9 million from the province and $1.7 million from the city.

“Once we got money from those two sources, we would do some fundraising and the business side of the project would carry a mortgage,” says Cochrane.

Right now, MH Renaissance’s proposal is still being debated by Moncton’s city council. There is also a competing proposal on the table from Terra Trust and Bird Construction, but details of it have yet to be made public. In the meantime, Cochrane says they are continuing to talk to potential commercial tenants for the building. He’s confident they’ll see favourable results from the city soon.

“We expect something in the next three or four weeks or a month from the city and of course the province then will indicate their support and obviously find some businesses and so who will be ready to say they are going in. It’s at a good place,” he says. “It took two and a half years to get here, but we think the next month will be very crucial.”