Random Access

A rummage through the Britannia School House and Britannia Farm file yesterday proved informative and instructive, on the eve of yet-another historic announcement about the future of the property by the Peel District School Board.
The file begins with a May 12, 1971 front-page report in The Mississauga News which explains how the Town of Mississauga has leased the farm from the school board for $1 in hopes of proceeding with a massive recreation area.
A year before the town had submitted a report with proposals, "for a stadium which the town and the school board will require sooner or later, mass picnic areas, a bridal path, numerous fields for soccer, baseball diamonds and even a ski hill which in the summer could be used as an amphitheatre."
Fast forward to 1986, when then-director John Fraser waxes poetic about the potential of the still-stunningly green 200 acres of land smack dab in the geographic and demographic centre of Peel.
"One could imagine a children's place, a large tract of land, in the centre of one of Canada's most-densely populated areas, dedicated to the education and development of the child, enriching their lives. The plastic artificiality of Canada's wonderland or the commercial trappings of the West Edmonton Mall are no substitute for the natural foundation that underlies our history in southern Ontario."
Among the potential uses Fraser foresaw: a replica pioneer village with a demonstration farm, an art park, a Christmas tree farm so students could cut their own trees and continuation of the "sugaring operation" in the maple sugar bush, which used to be a highlight of March break activities.
"If this project could capture the imagination of our community, we could have, for our children and for future generations of children, a place dedicated to them; a place in the midst of commerce, industry and asphalt where a child could stand in a quiet pasture and feel the soft texture of grass on bare feet," concludes Fraser.
They don't write bureaucratic reports like that anymore, alas.
Other blips along the way to farm non-development included the Britannia Golf Centre (designed by world famous golf course architect and Erindale Secondary School graduate Thomas McBroom) which was abruptly driven into the rough by a highly-indignant Education Minister John Snobelen.
In 2002, there were plans for an office building and convention centre at the corner of Hurontario and Bristol Rd. In 2004, the board approved a three-storey, 60,000 sq. ft. building there for the Centre for Education and Training.
In view of the past history, it's no wonder that Board Chair Janet McDougald was the first to admit at a session with local reporters last night that just because the board is announcing yet-another approved plan for the farm, does not mean it will necessarily happen.
This one, though, really does feel different. It has the smell of something — money not manure — that hasn't been associated with many of the past endeavours.
The board hired an experienced commercial broker-consultant in DTZ Barnicke to guide them through the process and had nine firms on its long list, including some of the province's and the country's major players.
The short version of the deal is that the board hacks 31.67 acres off the southwest corner of the farm, with highly-desirable frontages along Hurontario St. and Bristol Rd. W. (outlined in red in the aerial photo) and leases them to a developer (Osmington Inc. partially owned by the Ken Thomson family) for 99 years. In return, the board gets a huge upfront one-time payment for the development rights as soon as Osmington has received approval for five to eight office towers from the City of Mississauga, expected to be one to two years.
The board puts the money in a reserve and uses some for capital improvements on the farm (perhaps a visitors' centre, upgraded walkways, a student science-environment centre along Cooksville Creek, revival of the sugar shack, or whatever else works.)
The money is also used to upgrade the board's beautiful but underused two northern field centres, namely the Jack Smythe and G.W. Finlayson Centres.
It's not too hard to follow the rationale here. You do something you don't really want to do — create a wall of office towers along Hurontario and develop a corner of the farm — to gain a greater good, resuscitating vital outdoor education programs that have been sadly neglected for far too long, and for which there is virtually no provincial funding.
McDougald freely admitted that she couldn't answer a number of critical questions about the venture at this point, for various reasons.
For example: How exactly does one determine what fair market value now for development over a period of 99 years?
The height and size of the buildings will be determined by the municipal review process.
"The board has not discussed what will be done with the revenue, but we will be responsible with it," the chair said.
There will obviously be a temptation of future boards to dip into the farm fund to pay for other needs, such as the crumbling schools that there is never enough money to fix. The board can put guidelines in place to try to prevent that, but there is no guarantee of what future boards will do.
The exact location and role of three heritage buildings that must be moved is not known, although the developer will pay for the move and upgrade the buildings so they are useable again. (The student demonstration farm visitation program that used to be run at Britannia had to be abandoned because the buildings didn't meet building code and safety standards.)
Maybe the biggest question of all is: Is this just another in the long line of promising but ultimately failed proposals or will something finally happen on the Britannia farm?
As noted here before, retaining a huge piece of pristine green property in the midst of our nearly-mature city, with nothing on it but fox, deer racoon, skunks, sugar maple trees, hop-hornbeam, red oak, white birch, black cherry, American beech, blue beech, Witch-Hazel (not the one at City Hall), aspen, a silver and red maple swamp and even a provincially and nationally rare viburnum called a Southern Arrowood, wouldn't be the worst option in the world.