Alderwood Collegiate Institute (Alderwood CI, ACI, or Alderwood), named Alderwood Secondary School and Alderwood High School prior is a former public high school that existed from 1955 to 1983 under the governance of the Etobicoke Board of Education (now part of the Toronto District School Board) and that served the Alderwood neighbourhood in the former city of Etobicoke in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
The school merged with New Toronto Secondary School to form Lakeshore Collegiate Institute in 1983. The portion of the Alderwood property was transferred to the TDSB's realtor arm, Toronto Lands Corporation (TLC) in 2011 and sold to Urbancorp, a housing developer in August 2012.
History
Origins
In 1952, the Etobicoke Board of Education had originally intended a middle school in the present site. With overcrowding at Royal York Collegiate Institute, the board decided to purchase the 15.87-acre Shields Site for $148,000. The northern portion would be then used for Douglas Park Junior School which opened in 1956.
Gordon S. Adamson and Associates were commissioned as architects for the Alderwood project. Construction began on July 30, 1954, but the flooding from Hurricane Hazel caused a delay. The school was opened on September 6, 1955, to the first 340 students, with the official opening ceremony November 1955. With increasing population, four classrooms, a science lab, a commercial room, a new auditorium and enlarged cafeteria were added in 1960.
Closure and onwards
In September 1980, New Toronto Secondary School, Royal York Collegiate Institute (now Etobicoke School of the Arts), and Alderwood underwent a review due to low enrollment as many catholic immigrants who arrived in the area transferred their children to the separate school system when full separate school funding commenced. As a consequence, on June 24, 1981, the Etobicoke Board approved the closure of Alderwood and New Toronto whose students were combined into the newly renamed Lakeshore Collegiate Institute on June 25, 1983, with the afternoon closing ceremonies.
Since the merger of Etobicoke's first catholic high school, Michael Power/St. Joseph High School in 1982, the main campus suffered overcrowding resulting in the Alderwood building being leased to the Metropolitan Separate School Board (later the Toronto Catholic District School Board) from the Etobicoke Board of Education. It was reopened as the south campus of Michael Power/St. Joseph. In September 1986, Father John Redmond Catholic Secondary School was established. The school later moved to a new building in New Toronto's large former Mimico Lunatic Asylum grounds in 2006 after its buildings were deteriorated.
Val Homes
Alderwood Collegiate's buildings remained empty for five years. In 2011, however, the TDSB transferred the vacant Alderwood's 8.5-acre portion of the original 14.1-acre site to the Toronto Lands Corporation (TLC) for sale.[1] TLC sold the portion to a townhouse developer, Urbancorp in August 2012.[2] After much community consultations, Alderwood's school facilities were demolished in November 2014 with the property being converted to a residential complex known as Val Homes. Subsequently, Urbancorp filed for the Companies Creditors Arrangement Act. Couple years after, Mattamy Homes took over the 92-unit residential project with a combined of detached and semi-detached.
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