For sale: Want to buy an old school in Bridgetown?

Annapolis County Council hopes someone can breathe new life into a 60-year-old elementary school. 

Municipal officials have put Bridgetown Elementary School up for sale — and Warden Timothy Habinski said the ideal buyer would turn the building into something the community can use.

"What we would like is a project that has a strong business case and demonstrable community benefit," he told CBC Nova Scotia.

Premier Stephen McNeil attended Bridgetown Elementary School when he was a child.

The building and its adjacent land on Centennial Drive has an assessed value of $1.2 million. It's been closed for about a year.

The province plans to tear down nearby Bridgetown Regional High School, which also closed at the end of the last school year.

Students from both schools now attend a Primary to Grade 12 facility that opened last September.

No demolition

Habinski said council would like to avoid paying to tear down the elementary school.

"I don't think that council is in a hurry to pull the trigger on a demolition," he said. "I think we'd like to give it every possible opportunity to be parlayed into a successful project."

But he said that meant not doing what other communities have done with their surplus schools.

"A lot of them have been turned into artist collectives that last for, you know, between nine months and a couple of years and then die," he said. "And then you're faced with the same problem again.

"We don't want something that's going to have a short shelf life."

Habinski pointed to the decision in Annapolis Royal to convert the former Annapolis Royal Academy into condominiums. 

"That's been done really, really successfully," he said. "I think even the proponents of that project are surprised by how wildly successful that's been. I'd love something like that."

Buyers have until June 1 to send in proposals. According to the bid documents, "selected proponents will form a shortlist and be invited to interview with County staff."