An important part of many children’s lives in Belleville and area will be reborn in a new location.
Wednesday morning Mayor Mitch Panciuk announced that the city has donated 1.5 acres of land at the site of the former Hillcrest School at West Street and McFarland Drive to the Board of Directors of the Children’s Safety Village (CSV).
A fundraising campaign by the CSV to come up with money to build a new modern safety village will begin soon and it’s hoped the entire project will be done within the next five years.
Currently the village operates on the location of the former Belleville Police Service headquarters on Dundas Street East however the city has donated that property to Habitat for Humanity for a Habitat Horizons Centre and a Quinte Housing Hub.
Mayor Panciuk said the remainder of the former school property will be devoted to other, as yet unspecified, recreational uses adding “residents who were worried about more housing being built on that property need not be as the Children’s Safety Village is going where we had originally planned for housing to be.”
The Children’s Safety Village has been operating since 2004.
