The City of Cranbrook is deferring demolition of the old brick Works and Electrical Building behind city hall for one year in order to give a city group time to formulate a plan to preserve it.

Council voted four to three August 12, following a debate, to approve Coun. Gerry Warner’s motion to have the city suspend the demolition order “for one year after passage of this motion to give the community group an opportunity to secure the brick building and redevelop it into a structure that would serve the city and preserve Cranbrook’s brick heritage.

The group seeking to preserve the 80-year-old building includes members of the Columbia Basin Institute of Regional History and the East Kootenay Historical Society, with both groups having called on the city to preserve it.

Warner, fellow councilors Sharon Cross and Bob Whetham and Mayor Wayne Stetski voted to support the deferral, while councilors Denise Pallesen, Diana J Scott and Angus Davis voted for demolition.

Mayor Stetski led off the debate, citing three reasons he favours the deferral.

“I’ve come to respect how we do business as a council” he said, noting common practice is to consult with residents who know more about given issues/matters. “The people who know something about the history in Cranbrook are telling us this is historically significant to the city.”

Stetski also noted he hasn’t received a call or email supporting the demolition and he supports “architectural creativity” that could make something out of the building.

“Leadership is about listening and learning and doing the right thing,” he said.

Coun. Whetham said he sees no rush in demolishing the building and proposed the city undertake a planning workshop to consider the entire downtown city hall block, including the RCMP station, fire hall and adjacent buildings.

Whetham said he is impressed by the range of people supporting keeping the building intact – including youth. “It’s not just greybeards and no hairs,” he said.

Warner argued the city needs to operate with “a little bit of vision; a little bit of imagination” and by doing so the old building, which he admitted would be costly to repair, could be transformed into something special for the city.

Warner quoted a letter to the editor in e-KNOW from Troy D. Hunter, who has a Diploma in Cultural Conservation from the University of Victoria and has written criticism’s about the lack of heritage conservation in Cranbrook.

“I support the endeavour to preserve the building as well as to revisit heritage buildings in the downtown core and area. There is no heritage designation and no protection to many of the buildings and its time to start looking at that. It would be really cool if Cranbrook came up with a facade incentive program in order to restore the old town look and feel. The City of Merritt did this with a Western theme and it is helping to boost economic development there as a result. It’s time Cranbrook achieved a vision of character while preserving things such as the art deco styles, Victorian era buildings, etc.” Warner quoted.

The councilors in favour of demolition admitted they are impressed by the passion and commitment of the group fighting to preserve the building, but they stand by their decisions last winter to demolish it.

“To me, I think that the building has outlived its usefulness,” said Coun. Davis.

Coun. Scott noted the building is unsafe. “Our building inspector said something needs to be done ASAP. There is some urgency,” she said, concluding if it does get torn down, she’d like to see the bricks reused on a community project.

Lead image: artist rendition of what could be done with old building, courtesy Gerry Warner.

Ian Cobb/e-KNOW

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