The owner of the 123-year-old Canmore Hotel is preparing to take the first official step towards restoring this downtown landmark.
Built in 1890 by Eugene de Rambouville, a French count, the Canmore Hotel is the oldest wooden hotel in Alberta and the province’s second-oldest operating hotel.
Neil Richardson, who, through his Calgary-based company Heritage Property Corp., bought the Canmore Hotel in 2006, is currently working with Town of Canmore planners as he prepares to submit a development permit application and a sustainability screening report (SSR). The SSR process, which is unique to Canmore, asks developers to outline how their project will benefit Canmore’s community environmentally, socially and economically.
Alaric Fish, manager of planning and development for the Town of Canmore, said the SSR process includes a section in the offsets or benefits that addresses restoration of heritage buildings.
“I don’t want to say too much at this point, but the trick is the SSR will be less of an issue than the eventual development permit application. That is where there will be fairly significant tradeoffs in the preservation of the heritage building.
“We recognize there is some pretty strong benefits in trying to preserve these buildings,” Fish said. Among the tradeoffs Fish said he expects the Town will have to consider are relaxations to building height and parking.
“The Canmore Hotel is one of only (a few) heritage buildings in town so we’re really excited that we have someone… who is interested in doing exactly that, preserving the heritage,” he said. “And that is something we can’t control. Someone could buy it and propose to tear it down and there’s nothing we could do there, so we’re excited about the opportunity this presents.”
Richardson, who has rehabilitated five heritage buildings in Calgary, the Lougheed Building and the North-West Travellers building included, described his plans for the Canmore Hotel as a “restoration and sensitive rehabilitation” coupled with construction of a new addition.
As part of the restoration and rehabilitation, Richardson said he is planning to keep intact both the physical structure of the Canmore Hotel and its current use as a bar and accomodation.
“Our goal is not to maximize density on that site. We’re not trying to build as big of something as we possibly can,” he said Feb. 25. “We start with the reverse; how do we keep the hotel sitting on the corner (as) historically accurate as we can, but still make it economically feasible?”
To that end, Richardson is planning to build a three-storey addition in the open space that separates the hotel from the CIBC to provide retail space on the first floor and hotel rooms on the second and third floors.
The rooms in the second storey of the Canmore Hotel will be renovated, with approximately every three rooms becoming two in order to install bathrooms in each. Guests will access both the historic and new portions of the hotel through the building’s current side entrance on Seventh Avenue.
The higher-end or boutique accommodation component, including the new addition, is required, Richardson said, to ensure the project makes sense financially; a key component when considering whether or not to undertake a for-profit heritage restoration project.
“If we just restored the Hotel and didn’t build anything else the economics don’t work, so you have to come up with these compromises of new versus old. In our case, we have put the density on the side of the hotel,” he said.
“As a for-profit developer we look at opportunities where hopefully the economics can make sense. You need economic benefits, obviously, or you can’t survive (but) we value the social benefit, as well. Canmore has such a limited inventory of heritage buildings and so much has been lost it is incumbent on us – and not only us but the Town – to look at ways of how can you save and preserve them, how can you make them relevant?”
Part of that relevancy comes in keeping the bar running as a bar, without turning it into something it’s not, especially given that throughout its history, the Canmore Hotel has catered to locals.
“There are so many good high-end places in Canmore and we don’t want to compete against any of that, especially on the food service side. Go across the street and have a lovely dinner at Murrieta’s or up the street or down the street, but when you are done come to the Canmore Hotel for a couple of beers and listen to the band.
“It always has been the local watering hole and we want to keep it that way, recognizing that the locals aren’t probably going to stay in the hotel.”
Richardson said the bar, which will continue to feature live music on weekends, along with Sunday night jam sessions, will be expanded into the empty retail space at the back of the building and the space under the deck will be converted into staff and storage areas.
While for many developers it might make more sense to tear down the Canmore Hotel and build something new, Richardson said he sees value in keeping heritage buildings in place, even with challenges such as meeting building codes and safety standards and removing asbestos.
“Every one brings its challenges, but we go in predisposed that we want to save heritage buildings and how should we do it, as opposed to should we or should we not?”
Larry Pearson, director of the Historic Places Stewardship Section with Alberta Culture, said rehabilitating heritage buildings is the ideal definition of sustainable development, as it provides social, economical and environmental benefits.
The social benefits come in ensuring the community has links to its past, Pearson said. “You can’t have a sustainable community, in my mind, if you don’t have a community that doesn’t vigoursly preserves its heritage. Those links with the past are important to maintaining the social cohesion of the place,” Pearson said.
The environmental benefits are seen in keeping material out of the landfill and improving the building’s energy efficiency. The economic benefits come in job creation as part of the renovations.
“It hits the triple bottom line big time. You can’t get more triple bottom line than that.”
Once completed in about two years, the hotel will have been restored to how it appeared in the 1890s shortly after it was completed, with physical evidence on the property and historical photographs informing its final look.
The colour will be restored to its original brown and the window layout will be changed to reflect the original structure, as well.
The interior, however is more challenging as Richardson said he has found few photographs of the interior from the hotel’s earliest days. But Richardson, in conjunction with the Canmore Museum & Geoscience Centre, is planning to put out a call to residents for help in the hopes that residents might have archival material such as photographs or other documents, relating to the hotel that could help guide the restoration.
After sitting through six turbulent years, Richardson said the time is finally right to begin restoring the hotel: the trades are available and the cost to undertake a restoration project is more reasonable.
“When we first bought it you couldn’t find trades people, you couldn’t find people to work on your projects. Everything was tremendously expensive because they were all building high-end residential accommodation. We didn’t even consider doing renovations for the first period of time because the economics were not going to make it worthwhile, especially when heritage preservation is more labour intensive than regular construction.
“Instead of renovating, we sold beer to the trades people working on other projects. We just sold them beer and waited for the market to cool down.”
But rather than cooling, the markets collapsed and created a situation where the people were available but the capital was not, Richardson said, adding that it appears the market is finally back to a more normal point.
“We think the timing is right. From the indications we have from the Town, there’s always things you have to ask for in the way of accommodating it, but they seem to be receptive,” Richardson said. “Everybody wants the hotel saved. It doesn’t seem like there’s anybody out there saying rip it down and build new.”
