Burnaby North Secondary students and staff are all finished moving in to their new $115-million school, raising questions about what will happened to the old buildings still standing on the site.
Students and staff migrated into their new digs at 751 Hammarskjold Dr. in the second week of January, but it will take some time until the old buildings come down, according to secretary-treasurer Ishver Khunguray, who updated the school board's committee of the whole on the project last week.
Both the cost of disposing of materials at a landfill and a 2022 City of Burnaby bylaw around the diversion of construction demolition waste, including drywall, wood and concrete, means school demolitions look a bit different than they used to, Khunguray told the committee.
"What we call it is less of a demolition; it's more of a deconstruction of the school," he said.
The city's bylaw requires 70 per cent of the construction waste to be diverted or recycled to keep it out of the landfill, according to Khunguray.
"We have to follow that process before we get our permit," he said. "We pay a deposit ahead of time and we don't see that deposit back until we hit the 70 per cent mark."
Asbestos abatement and the removal of fixtures and millwork inside the old buildings, which were built in the 1960s, began this week, according to the district.
Once that's complete, the district told the NOW the plan is for the north building to come down in early spring, followed by the south building.
Once the buildings are demolished, the district will build an all-weather gravel field and parking where the north building currently stands.
At the committee meeting on Jan. 15, trustee Mikelle Saskamoose asked Khunguray if the field would be a turf field, and he said "correct," but the district has since told the NOW the field it plans to build on the school site will be a gravel, all-weather field.
The school will have access to one new artificial turf field, however, since the city plans to replace and upgrade the existing city-owned field inside the track just north of the new school.
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