Sale price for old St. Patrick's School building in Saint John goes up 2,000% in 7 years
CBC
After sitting empty for almost a decade, a century-old school building on Saint John's west side was just sold to a developer for 19 times what it fetched seven years ago, the first time it was sold.
St. Patrick's School on City Line sold for $745,000 on Oct. 5, New Brunswick tax records show.
The real estate agent who handled the sale, Liane Daigle of Exit Realty, would not disclose the buyer but said that they "intend to proceed with quality residential apartments."
St. Patrick's opened in 1924 as a two-storey, red brick Catholic school. Additions came later to the school, which is still fondly remembered by former students. The school went up to Grade 5 when the Anglophone South School District closed it in 2014 because of structural problems.
The Assumption Parish, which still owned the building, sold it two years later to a local couple, who did some interior work but never fully redeveloped the property.
They paid $35,000 for the building, a far cry from the price they sold it for, which is 2,028 per cent higher
Daigle said the value of the building comes from its rezoning to "integrated development," which allows for a mix of residential and commercial uses.
"Its hard for most people to understand the value of that," she said.
Government records show the building's owner to be a company called City Line Holdings.
Its president, Erik de Jong, lists experience working with various development companies in New Brunswick over the past decade on his LinkedIn page. De Jong did not respond to a request for comment when reached via social media.
In a slide show made to help sell the building, Daigle described the potential for 30-plus residential apartments as well as at least eight townhouses on the side of the property that borders Lancaster Avenue.
Photos of the interior of the 40,000-square-foot building were included in the presentation, which also mentioned "significant" flood damage that occurred when it was used as a school, as well as leaks in the gymnasium roof.
The presentation also noted that the property does not have a heritage designation — "thus limitless design options."
The structural issue with a staircase that closed the school in the first place "has not been addressed as it presented no danger to proceed with the future use by the current owner," Daigle said.
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