REGINA — The future of a downtown Regina building appears to finally have been settled at council Monday.
Council voted in favour of administration’s recommendation to approve demolition of the 100-year-old Burns Hanley building located at 1863 - Cornwall St. But it is conditional on preserving the west facade of the building facing Cornwall Street.
The final decision follows a long discussion that spanned several council meetings, with councillors divided on how to proceed on the property.
The real issue concerned what to do with the facade itself. One option was to brace the facade in place while the demolition took place, while the option recommended was to deconstruct and then rebuild the facade.
Previously the Saskatchewan Heritage Foundation Review Board had made its recommendation to preserve the west facade, with building owners Harvard Diversified Enterprises Inc. also agreeing.
The owners’ plan for the facade is to dismantle it, brick by brick, and store it so it could be rebuilt once new development goes up at the location.
It was that plan that drew the ire of Bob Hawkins, Ward 2 councillor, who brought forward a motion to reconsider his previously defeated May 18 council motion to refer the issue of the facade to arms-length third-party experts in heritage and in heritage construction.
Hawkins noted that when council heard opinions on the issue at council, those were opinions representing the applicants and the proponents in this case and were widely conflicting. Hawkins made the point that an independent opinion was needed.
Hawkins also expressed little confidence that the deconstruction/reconstruction option would work, citing concerns that replacement bricks would be difficult to find if they were lost during the reconstruction.
He called for the issue to be referred back to administration so they could get “data-based, fact-based” independent arms-length opinion.
The indication from administration was that such an independent report would take six to nine months to complete and cost $40,000 to $60,000.
Hawkins believed it was worth it to take the time to “get it right,” noting it was “six to nine months” for a 100-year-old streetscape.
While council did vote in favour of reconsidering Hawkins’ motion, allowing it to come back to the floor for discussion, his referral motion ended up losing by a 6-3 vote, with only Hawkins and councillors Dan LeBlanc and Andrew Stevens in favour.
The defeat of the referral motion was far from the end of the matter.
An amending motion that had been moved at the May 18 meeting by LeBlanc called for the demolition application to be denied, and to order the property owner to undertake all necessary repairs and other measures to stabilize the building and preserve the facade.
That failed by a 6-3 vote, with LeBlanc, Hawkins and Stevens the only yes votes.
Another amending motion from LeBlanc that would have supported the option of bracing and retaining the facade in place during demolition then came to the floor. It was at this point that Hawkins voiced his support for the amendment, citing his lack of confidence that the facade could be preserved through a reconstruction option.
“If this facade is taken down brick by brick, it will never be restored properly to the condition that it would be in if the facade was preserved by bracing it,” he said.
This motion also failed by a 6-3 vote.
Finally, the lengthy main motion, which called for approving the demolition, subject to dismantling and storage of the west facade for restoration and reconstruction in future development, came up for final discussion.
At this point Ward 7 Councillor Terina Shaw, who had moved the main motion, said there had been a review done by the Heritage Review Board. She said the recommendations were from experts —even if they weren’t arms-length ones, but “half an arm’s length.”
“It’s done,” said Shaw, who added that as a first term councillor, “I’m already tired of this back and forth. We just need procedures and bylaws set up when people buy heritage properties so they know what they’re getting themselves into.”
In the end, council voted in favour of the main motion 7-2, with only Hawkins and LeBlanc opposed.
