Unique Partnership Explores the Replacement of Willoughby Elementary

Other 2 pages 02/2026

A real plan for Willoughby Elementary and a long needed community centre in Willoughby at 208^th Street and 80^th Avenue is now publicly moving forward.

We have finalized a new memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Infrastructure and School District 35. This MOU sets the foundation to replace the aging Willoughby Elementary next to the Langley Tennis Centre and locate a new, proposed Willoughby Community Centre where the school sits today.

As Willoughby and Willoughby Town Centre have grown these past 20 hears, there is no doubt that the school's location that just doesn't work long-term. Access points were not designed for finished arterial roads. Much of the daily pickup and drop-off now happens on the north side of 80^th Avenue. As a rural school, it was built for a few hundred students, and has more than 550. Hundreds of students remain in portables. It hasn't seismically upgraded.

On Council last term, it was painfully obvious that there was no plan whatsoever for a new pool and community centre for more than 100,000 current and future residents in Willoughby, with the Walnut Grove Community Centre expected to serve up to 150,000 residents. Swimming lessons well beyond capacity. No seniors centre for a growing, aging population. No location. No urgency. No plan.

We have now changed that.

I want to thank Minster Bowinn Ma and the Ministry of Infrastructure that helping make this possible. Thank you to the Board of Education for endorsing this new direction. And thank you to Council, as we have advocated for this outcome for nearly three years now.

It's a great step forward.

The next step now will be to just get it done. We need to advance the proposed Willoughby Community Centre from a plan to a reality. And we must ensure that this site is for the community land, not sold off by the next Council for more housing. For Willoughby. For all of Langley.