Students attending Harry Balfour School on 104 Avenue in Grande Prairie (pictured above) will soon be attending a new school east of Grande Prairie (Photo: Shaun Penner / EverythingGP staff)

By Shaun Penner

Projected to take two years

Construction of Harry Balfour School replacement at Five Mile site expected to start in Fall 2021

Mar 10, 2021 | 4:09 PM

Construction of the new school at the Five Mile Hall site in the County of Grande Prairie is slated to begin this fall, as the Peace Wapiti Public School Division has awarded the design contract to Start Architecture, an Alberta-based architecture firm.

The project is expected to take two years to complete and will serve as a Junior K-8 school that will replace Harry Balfour School. The Five Mile Hall site is located about six kilometres east of downtown Grande Prairie.

Getting a replacement school for Harry Balfour has been the top capital priority for the division since 2018 after the opening of Whispering Ridge Community School that same year saw half of the school’s growing population move there.

“The replacement school achieves another important goal for the Board – educating County of Grande Prairie students where they live, thereby eliminating the additional time required to transport rural students through the busy central core of the city to the current location at 104 Street in Grande Prairie,” added PWPSD officials, in a release.

The division says it is currently collaborating with Alberta Education, Alberta Infrastructure and Start Architecture on the design for the school, which they say will be similar to that of Whispering Ridge Community School.

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The County of Grande Prairie, meanwhile, is continuing to work towards servicing the site. The County was recently granted $2.6 million from the province’s Municipal Stimulus Program to help go towards the cost of providing water, wastewater, natural gas and power to the site, which they hope to have completed by summer.

READ MORE: County granted $2.6 million to help service Five Mile school site

The division says Start Architecture, which is based out of both Edmonton and Calgary, has collaborated with Alberta Education and Infrastructure on several past school projects, including Mother Teresa Catholic School in Grande Prairie.

Other projects Start Architecture has been involved in include the CN Campus in Winnipeg, Phase 1 of the Stollery Children’s Hospital Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (PCICU) and the Central Alberta Cancer Centre.

Funding for construction of the school was confirmed by Education Minister Adriana LaGrange one year ago during a visit to Grande Prairie.

The school site was purchased by the County of Grande Prairie back in 2019.