{"id":15720,"date":"2016-11-02T17:07:54","date_gmt":"2016-11-02T21:07:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=15720"},"modified":"2016-11-02T17:07:54","modified_gmt":"2016-11-02T21:07:54","slug":"historic-willow-farm-property-acquired-by-st-andrews-college","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/historic-willow-farm-property-acquired-by-st-andrews-college\/","title":{"rendered":"Historic Willow Farm property acquired by St. Andrew\u2019s College"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir <\/strong><\/p>\n

One of Aurora\u2019s oldest surviving houses is set to turn over a new leaf in its storied history.
\nWillow Farm, which has been on the southwest corner of Yonge Street and St. John\u2019s Sideroad for nearly 200 years, is now part of the St. Andrew\u2019s College campus, a deal the local private school has been eyeing for over 40 years.
\nThe 15 acre acquisition extends the campus to 125 acres.
\nAccording to headmaster Kevin McHenry, it has been a long time coming but the various factors to make the deal a reality never aligned \u2013 until now.
\n\u201cWhenever you own a business or a school and there is an adjacent property in your community, you need to consider it,\u201d he tells The Auroran. \u201cWe have always considered it, but just the timing wasn\u2019t right for the school. If you go back three-and-a-half years to when the property last changed hands, personally, as head of the school, I was extremely interested, upbeat, and did everything I could with the Board to acquire it. However, a Board of Governors is there for a reason and they certainly did what they should have done; the timing wasn\u2019t right because we were in the middle of a $45 million capital campaign and to be able to access those funds that are necessary to make this kind of purchase just wasn\u2019t the right timing.
\n\u201cFast forward to where we are today, we are through our building campaign it was very successful, we\u2019re now about to create and we\u2019re about to create and publish our new Strategic Plan. Now we\u2019re looking at what\u2019s next for the school and that philosophy coincided nicely with the opportunity that was present at Willow Farm again. The Board had a better appetite to consider acquiring the company and ultimately we received unanimous support from our Board and we went for it in the summer.\u201d
\nThe new property acquisition will play an integral role in answering that question of what might be next for St. Andrew\u2019s College, and that question mark extends to just how that property will be used. Following the completion of their $45 million capital and building campaign, Mr. McHenry says \u201cit is not like we\u2019re flush with cash right now\u201d to think about putting up brand new buildings right away, but they are in a position right now where they can look to the future.
\n\u201cWe have about 15 different ideas on what this could become,\u201d he said.
\nOne thing is certain, however, and that is Willow Farmhouse itself, which dates to the first half of the 1800s is one of the two remaining original buildings of what was once the hamlet of Cosford\u2019s Corners, will remain in place.
\n\u201cWe need to decide what the best use for the school is,\u201d says Mr. McHenry, noting that, as of Monday, the building will be leased out to a retired couple through June 1. \u201cThrough this, we\u2019re going to be working on the property a little bit and trying to develop it through cleaning it up and making it more desirable. It is not our decision alone. We are totally respectful of that. We must work with the Town and Conservation Authority and all those forces to ensure that it is not only great for the school but very good for the community.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of Aurora\u2019s oldest surviving houses is set to turn over a new leaf in its storied history.
\nWillow Farm, which has been on the southwest corner of Yonge Street and St. John\u2019s Sideroad for nearly 200 years, is now part of the St. Andrew\u2019s College campus, a deal the local private school has been eyeing for over 40 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15688,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/2016-11-03-10.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-45y","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-20 00:07:52","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}