By COLLIN GALLANT on October 21, 2021.

The old CAPE and St. Louis school building was purchased by a local developer with the aim of creating an apartment building – News Photo Collin Gallant

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A historic school in the Flats is about to be redeveloped into luxury apartments by a local company, the News has learned.

Cambridge Developments purchased the 1912-era school building on Allowance Avenue and Balmoral Street in River Flats, which went on sale last spring.

This sale was approved by a special meeting of the Catholic Board of Education, where an offer of $ 550,000 was accepted, along with a close and possession date in early November.

Joel McNally, of Cambridge and related engineering firm McNally Associates, Ltd., said the plan for the structure is to retain many architectural features while converting it to multi-family housing. The project is similar to the business reshuffle of the Dairy Building on Fifth Street, SE, near downtown, he said.

“The plan is to preserve the existing building as much as possible and convert the classrooms into apartments,” McNally said. “It’s a great project at a great time for us.

The building was recently used as a facility for the CAPE School before this group moved to a newly renovated space attached to Medicine Hat High School.

This was previously the original St. Louis School in the Catholic system before a building exchange saw St. Louis reestablished in a former public school on Montreal Street several blocks south.

The asking price was $ 609,000 for the 19,000 square foot building which featured several more modern additions.

It sits on 0.8 acres including a playground.

This is the third central school site to be sold in Medicine Hat in the past eight years.

The former Earl Kitchener School was redeveloped into a private residence after no public group submitted bids for the property on the Southeast Hill.

Riverside School has been the subject of a conditional sale to Covenant Health as part of a project to build a new senior care facility.

The Central Park school site, which was most recently the French-speaking Les Cypres school, was demolished last winter, but there is no immediate timetable to dispose of the vacant land.