Windsor City Council is moving forward with designating the former International Playing Card Company building a heritage site.
That complicates the Greater Essex County School Board's plans to build a new K-8 French Immersion school on the property where the building currently sits at 1123 Mercer St.
Todd Awender, the superintendent of education with the school board, says they are open to discussions around saving features of the building but they cannot build the school within the current structure.
"Based on codes and bus bays and playgrounds for the kids, it makes it impossible to keep the existing structure there," says Awender.
Mayor Drew Dilkens says council moved the motion to designate the building which stops any demolition.
"At the end of the day this should not be a surprise, the Greater Essex County District School Board bought the property knowing that this conversation has been out there, it's been deferred a number of times," says Dilkens.
The issue first appeared before the Heritage Committee in June, 2016. Council will now move forward with developing a bylaw which will stipulate which features of the building will be designated and how it will be protected.
"It could be the entire building, it could be rooms within the building, it could be the facade only, there may be portions eligible to be excluded but that will all come back in due course after the appeal period," says Dilkens.
The school board announced the purchase of the land Friday. They were awarded just over $15-million to build a new school to accommodate around 650 students who are currently in the former W.D. Lowe School on Giles Ave.
"This certainly does put a little bit of a pause in the process and hopefully in the future it will come out so that we can get the school up and going," says Awender.
The school board had hoped to have the new school up and running by September 2018.
