Rocky Mountain Charter School Foundation<\/a> had applied to rezone the 11-acre site near 10 Street and 68 Avenue N.E. to allow for a K-12 charter school with a focus on health and wellness, sustainable agriculture and global technology.<\/p>\nThe site, which is located in the Deerfoot City Business Park between Deerfoot Trail and Calgary International Airport, is home to an office building with warehouse space.<\/p>\n
However, city councillors voted 12-2 against the application, which has officially been refused and abandoned over a number of concerns with the site.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have a school for September 2026 for 750 students,\u201d said Nasser Kadri with the Rocky Mountain Charter School Foundation. \u201cIt\u2019s not so much a question where we go from here, it\u2019s where the kids go from here.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Several councillors had noted concerns with the site\u2019s proximity to the airport, as well as industrial businesses in the area including a window and glass manufacturing plant, an ambulance training centre, a heavy equipment storage facility, and a drywall supplier.<\/p>\n
The Calgary Police Service firearms training centre is also located near the proposed school.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not sure why we\u2019re even considering this,\u201d said Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot. \u201cThis is probably the worst place in the city to put this type of use.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Placing a school in an industrial park would be \u201cbegging for trouble,\u201d according to Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas, who also voted against the proposal amid concerns of a lack of pedestrian infrastructure like sidewalks along the site.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a place in the city to have schools that\u2019s closer to parks, that\u2019s closer to residential areas, that\u2019s supported by transit near pathway connections with sidewalks,\u201d Farkas said.<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1:49
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGrade 6 students at a NE Calgary school to start the year at a school six kilometres away\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
According to the Rocky Mountain Charter School Foundation, the proposed school had a conditional approval from Alberta Education.<\/p>\n
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In a statement, Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides said school authorities are responsible for securing appropriate facilities, and that funding is only released after a lease is signed and zoning approvals are secured.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThrough discussions with the school authority, it was communicated that relying on a single facility option carried inherent risk, as zoning approval was not guaranteed,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven the site\u2019s industrial location, there was a recognized possibility it could be deemed unsuitable. This risk was identified and clearly communicated to the school authority.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ward 14 Coun. Landon Johnston and Ward 5 Coun. Raj Dhaliwal were the sole votes in favour of the proposal.<\/p>\n
Dhaliwal said he had been in conversations with the applicant and had hoped to mitigate council\u2019s concerns in the development permit stage of the process.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we could get it to the (development permit) stage and it\u2019s identified that this is not going to work, it\u2019s not going to work,\u201d he told reporters. \u201cThat\u2019s why I was supportive of it, to at least take it to that stage, but unfortunately it failed.<\/p>\n
City administration had noted that allowing a school in that industrial area \u201cmay weaken the supply of strategically located industrial land,\u201d and could reduce the area\u2019s \u201cattractiveness for warehousing and related industrial investments.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cThirty years of experience in education, I totally believed that this site is perfect in many ways,\u201d Kadri told reporters. \u201cI understand that it\u2019s industrial, but which takes precedence: industrial or our kids?\u201d<\/p>\n
The Calgary Planning Commission recommended city council reject the proposal, with Commissioner Nathan Hawryluk noting there is \u201cstrong logic\u201d for not allowing a school in an industrial area.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis application is a reminder that we need to find a real plan for finding space for charter schools,\u201d he wrote in his comments to council.<\/p>\n
\u201cIdeally, that land would be located by people and not in the middle of industrial areas.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\t© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Calgary city council has rejected a request to allow for a charter school in an industrial park in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194293],"tags":[49,2798,232827,177137,64915,48,549,714,232828],"class_list":{"0":"post-620010","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-calgary","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-calgary","10":"tag-calgary-charter-schools","11":"tag-calgary-city-hall","12":"tag-calgary-education","13":"tag-canada","14":"tag-education","15":"tag-politics","16":"tag-rocky-mountain-charter-school-foundation"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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