Tuesday - Oct. 8, 2024 - Land for new Chilliwack schools pegged at $67 million

🌧 High 15C | Your local forecast

Good morning!

Next week I’m going to spend several days in Prince Edward Island for a journalism conference. (The conference’s organizers are picking up the tab; we’re too cost-conscious to be flying me across the continent.) I’ve never been to the Maritimes, let alone Canada’s smallest province. Right now, my mission for next week is to eat seafood. But if you have some recommendations beyond that I’d love to hear them. (I’ll be without a car, I think, and mostly confined to central Charlottetown.)

On Sept. 27, we sent local election candidates our questionnaire and provided them ample time to respond. Alas, by our deadline—Oct. 7 at 1pm—only around half the candidates had responded. We hope to get more candidates’ responses by the end of the week—and we’ll be noting who met our generous deadline and who did not. One thing stood out: most candidates who have bothered to attend all-candidates meetings (or promised to do so) have answered our questions. So we’ve got a decent response from all parties in Chilliwack. Those who haven’t attended meetings have also been less than enthusiastic about responding to our questions.

– Tyler

NEWS

Barley and brews

A popular Chilliwack brewery hopes to team up with Abbotsford’s EcoFarm to open a new farm-based brewpub—and meet stiff provincial rules.

Farmhouse Brewing plans to open a brewery, pub, and outdoor events area with capacity for hundreds of additional guests. The endeavour is possible because the brewery’s potential Abbotsford host has been growing and stockpiling barley for two years, according to a newly public application to the City of Abbotsford.

Farmhouse is just the latest successful Fraser Valley brewery to target a neighbouring municipality for expansion. In the last two years, Langley’s Trading Post has opened a restaurant in Abbotsford, Abbotsford’s Fieldhouse Brewing has built a Chilliwack outpost, and Chilliwack’s Old Yale Brewing has gone the opposite direction, opening a pub in central Abbotsford.

Farmhouse is now seeking to emulate their competitors by opening a sizable pub at Abbotsford’s EcoFarm, on Sumas Way just south of Highway 1.

• Today, Tyler looks at Farmhouse Brewing’s plan to expand and what it will mean for EcoFarm.

Related

Need to Know

🔥 Fire destroyed a Langley Mexican restaurant over the weekend [CBC]

👉 The trial has begun for a man charged with stabbing a homeless man in Mission; the victim said the same man stabbed him six days before the attack [Mission Record]

🏪 A gun and hunting store is opening on Young Road in Chilliwack [Fraser Valley Today]

🐻 Two dead bears were found tied together and floating in the Harrison River; their paws and gallbladders had been removed [Global]

🚚 A truck heading up Mt. Cheam burst into flames Sunday [CTV]

⚖ An Abbotsford man who shot and wounded a farmer and killed a dog was sentenced to four years of prison [Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows News]

🚒 Fire destroyed a vacant Chilliwack home Sunday [Chilliwack Progress]

🥚 BC egg farmers are proud to produce local, healthy and nutritious eggs for Fraser Valley communities and throughout BC. World Egg Day is October 11.*

*Sponsored

🗳 Election 2024

The BC Election campaign continues until election day on Saturday, Oct. 19. Advance voting begins Thursday, Oct. 10. Find everything you need to know by visiting one of our local election hubs:

Chilliwack, Hope, and the Eastern Valley | Abbotsford and Mission | Langley

The latest

👉 The only televised debate of the election campaign takes place today at 6:30pm [Global]

👉 John Rustad apologized for previously suggesting he supported putting health officials on trial over COVID health measures [CBC]

👉 The Conservatives pledged to end tent cities, but there are legal questions [CTV] / One key legal precedent was set during a 2015 trial involving the City of Abbotsford [TheCourt.ca]

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The Agenda

Land for new and expanded Chilliwack schools comes with $67 million price tag

With more families moving into Chilliwack—and the province mandating substantial growth for the city over the next decade—the Chilliwack School District says it will need $67 million to purchase land for new schools and expand existing ones.

According to a recent report to the Chilliwack School Board, the district is anticipating roughly 1,210 additional students over the next decade. However, the district already has too few classrooms for the students it has, and will need to build just to maintain the current level of overcrowding.

The school district has said it will need to expand Chilliwack Middle School and Vedder Middle School, and build at least two more schools. The cost will be significant. At current property prices, the district is expecting it will need to spend roughly $30 million to buy land for the new schools—which are needed at both the north and south ends of the city. The land needed to expand Chilliwack Middle and Vedder Middle is expected to cost $19 million and $17 million, respectively.

Even with the new schools and expansions, the district would only be adding 1,305 new student spaces—meaning nearly the same proportion of students would be learning in portables a decade from now as they are today.

(The cost for the four new school sites was pegged at $10.9 million at a school board meeting last September. But staff miscalculated, according to the staff report, and the revised costs are roughly six times higher. They will be discussed at the school board meeting tonight.)

The $67 million does not include the cost to actually build the schools or the expansions.

Catch up