New opportunities for downtown and the Fire Hall as building listed for sale

The old Fire Hall downtown is to be put up for sale.

Cranbrook: The old Fire Hall downtown will be put up for sale allowing for the important historical building to be given new life, following the decision of Council at their meeting on Monday night.

The opportunity is now there for the currently empty fire hall to be purchased, renovated and given a new and useful purpose that will help continue to revitalize the downtown. The new owners will also be able to take advantage of the City’s downtown Revitalization Tax Exemption bylaw designed to encourage and stimulate development and improvement in the downtown helping enhance the economy and add to the beautification of the area. Those who take advantage of the bylaw can receive a property tax exemption of between 80 to 100 percent of the total improvement cost for a term of 5 years.

It is important to recognize that Council is not selling the City’s heritage. Regardless of its future use, the City’s Heritage Bylaw is in place to help maintain the heritage character of buildings designated under the bylaw, such as the Fire Hall – whether the ownership is public or private.

Council will review all offers being put forward for the old Fire Hall by potential buyers including all future use plans. Council is very keen to see what opportunities may exist for the building.

On Monday night, Council also decided not to extend the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the City of Cranbrook and the Cranbrook & District Arts Council (CDAC) around the potential repurposing of Fire Hall #1 to a permanent home for the arts. That MOU expired at the end of 2014.

Council believes the scale of the project proposed by the CDAC is simply beyond their ability to deliver.

From review of the structural assessment completed by an independent engineer, there are significant structural issues with the building. Similarly, in terms of the proposed business plan, there are several significant deficiencies with the draft business plan that makes Council suspect the viability of the plan.

For example, the plan lacks a proper basic feasibility assessment of the market. While there are a number of statements throughout the document claiming a high demand for the services proposed by CDAC, there is no actual supporting information justifying the statements.

The plan also lacks a proper analysis of the competition. In fact, many of the proposed activities and services of the plan duplicate what is already offered by existing facilities supported by the City. In essence, the plan proposes to go into direct competition with facilities already funded by the City including the Key City Theatre, the Studio Stage Door, the Royal Alexandra Hall at the Cranbrook History Centre and the Manual Training Centre along with private sector businesses and other service organizations.

Moving forward, Council is prepared to work with the CDAC to help them find an affordable permanent home. Although a new MOU will not be entered into at this time, Council will continue to support CDAC through its grants to organizations program and have committed $20,000 for operations of the CDAC in 2015.