Two aging schools in Grand Bay-Westfield will be replaced, the province announced on Thursday.
Plans will see the former WorkSafeNB rehabilitation centre turned into a school for the Anglophone South School District.
It would replace Grand Bay Primary School, which was built in 1947, and Inglewood School, which was built in 1960.
“As our population continues to grow and schools continue to age, we are exploring our options to retrofit available infrastructure into modern learning environments,” Education Minister Bill Hogan said in a news release.
“Using this existing building as a school not only ensures we are meeting the infrastructure needs of the education system but allows us to spend taxpayer dollars more wisely.”
The Grand Bay-Inglewood rationalization project is 10th on Education and Early Childhood Development’s stable departmental infrastructure priorities list.
WorkSafeNB sold the centre to the province in December. The facility has been largely empty since the pandemic forced WorkSafeNB to halt its rehabilitation services at the centre.
The Department of Transportation and Infrastructure will begin a structural analysis to determine what sort of work will be needed to complete the retrofit, along with the associated costs.
Officials said the school would only occupy a portion of the facility, with uses for the remaining space to be considered during the assessment process.
