the 1960s, but in the end even the "remote" location Chant had selected was being encroached on by urban sprawl. Although some consideration was given to moving the telescope to a new site, in the end it was decided the funds would be better spent on a smaller instrument in a much better location. This led to the building of a instrument at Las Campanas in Chile in 1971, creating the University of Toronto Southern Observatory (UTSO). It was at this location that University of Toronto telescope operator Ian Shelton discovered Supernova 1987A, the first supernova visible to the naked eye in more than 350 years. The UTSO was closed in 1997 to re-allocate funds to a share of the Gemini Observatory, and the telescope was moved to El Leoncito in Argentina, where the University has a 25% share in observation time. While University operations continued at the DDO, international observers used about 50% of observing time there. Closure, sale, redevelopment and reopening By the mid-1990s, the observatory remained the largest single-mirror site in Canada, but it was considered small by modern standards. The cutting edge of Canadian university astronomy studies was involved in some of the world's largest observatories: the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, the Atacama Large Millimeter Array and the Gemini Observatory. None of these telescopes are located in Canada. After the UTSO was closed, in 1998 the Canadian Astronomical Society, a society of university astronomers, published a long range plan emphasizing the study of the origins of structure in the universe, a task well-suited to cutting-edge telescopes but ill-suited to the DDO. The long-range plan suggested the future of observatories such as the DDO lay in public outreach programs and training. In 2005 Canadian universities joined a partnership to build the Thirty Meter Telescope, expected to cost more than $1 billion. In September 2007, the University stated it planned to sell the DDO property owing to light pollution. The university's governing council voted on the issue during the week of 1 November 2007, and agreed to sell the site to the highest bidder. The of land in the midst of a very large subdivision area was expected to fetch $100 million, some of which the university planned to use to found a Dunlap Institute to continue astronomical research. For the purposes of the sale, the land was partitioned into a Parcel A and a