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HALIFAX, N.S. —

Thirteen years after St. Pat’s High School closed, the city has sold the property on Quinpool Road to a developer in a meeting behind closed doors. Based on the sale price, the councillor for the area expects big plans for the site.

Halifax regional council approved the transaction in an in camera meeting Jan. 14, and the sale closed on Feb. 4 for a price of $37.61 million. According to provincial property records, the buyer is Banc Investments Ltd., owned by local developers Besim and Alex Halef.

Coun. Lindell Smith said the municipality doesn’t usually inform the public of sales like these, but, given the size and significance of this site, he said he would try to get the report declassified.

A pedestrian passes the former St. Pat's in the summer of 2015. - Ryan Taplin/File

Smith said he hasn’t heard from the Halefs about a proposal for the 3.3-acre site at the corner of Quinpool Road and Windsor Street.

“I can only assume, with the significant amount of money that’s been invested, it’s going to probably be a huge project,” he said in an interview Feb. 25.

“It’s a large area so there’s going to be significant development considering the price it went for, but it’s going to have to be really thought out in terms of layout.”

The municipality contracted out real estate services for the sale to Commercial Real Estate Services Canada, CBRE, which received a 2.5 -per cent fee. In a video posted to its website, CBRE advertised the “trophy development site” as having about 730,000 square feet of developable space — “a rare opportunity for a large scale, mixed-use development in central Halifax with prominent exposure and position.”

Like some community groups, Smith hoped to keep some of the space green and open to the public, but he noted the Halifax Common is close by.

The former school closed in 2007 and the municipality declared the property “surplus” in 2014, classifying it under the “economic development” stream, meaning it wanted to make some money from the sale.

The municipality then went through a public consultation process in 2015 and 2016 for the site, asking people what they wanted to see there, and Smith said that feedback informed the Centre Plan rules for the site.

The first half of the Centre Plan — the long-awaited set of land-use planning rules for the peninsula and downtown Dartmouth adopted last year — zoned the property Centre 2, meaning it uses a complex gross floor area ratio calculation to govern the size of the project. It’s also subject to a maximum height of 90 metres, equal to about 28 to 30 storeys.

Zane Woodford is a Halifax-based journalist for SALT and SaltWire.com

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