A Sense of Place
A growing number of people are crafting homes out of unlikely spaces that were formerly used for anything from schools and fire halls to retail shops. But despite the allure of living in a historic building, it’s not a process for the faint-of-heart, as permit applications — not to mention costs — pile up quickly
By Susan Pederson Photography By Jared Sych
Imagine stumbling upon a decades-old store or forgotten fire hall and envisioning the home of your dreams: funky, quirky and dripping with tales from long ago. It’s the über-cool choice of dwelling — if you can get your hands on one. Transforming these spaces into homes may take buckets of perseverance, but as anyone who has breathed new life into these forgotten edifices can attest, it’s worth every drop.
There has been many a boxing match in Jason Stang and Nicole Waring’s bedroom. Fortunately, those knock ‘em down, drag ‘em outs occurred long before the couple bought Calgary’s historic Fire Hall No. 4 and transformed it into their family home.
“There’s a blood pressure clinic around the corner, and we even had an older guy walk by here once and say, ‘I used to box in that building,’” says Stang. “We think it’s kind of ironic that the boxing ring used to be right where our bedroom is now.”
Boxing and firefighting might seem like strange bedfellows at first. The charming building was built in 1909 off of 6A Street N.E. in Bridgeland and relinquished its role as a fire hall when the YMCA’s Men’s Club and Rotary Club moved into the spot in 1926.
Some 80 years later, Waring takes me on a quick walkthough of the converted upstairs, and guesses that her young boys’ playroom resides in what was once the firemen’s sleeping quarters. The fire chief’s office once stood where the TV room is now. “The firemen alsoused to take in damaged toys and repair them here, back when toys were special,” Waring says.
The palpable sense of history is what attracted the couple to the building and made them take the leap of faith in 1999, when they purchased the neglected structure. It’s a romantic notion, really, inhabiting a building where voices of yesteryear still echo throughout the space, and where community heroes sprang to action to save the citizens of Calgary.
But the transformation of No. 4 into a modern home tested the intestinal fortitude of the couple almost as much as those boxing matches of years gone by.
“There were hurdles — big hurdles with the City,” says Stang, adding Waring was eight months pregnant at the time. “I was trying to figure out just who I had to deal with at the City, and finally I asked if I could just get all of the people I needed to talk to in one room.”
Expecting to see three or four interested parties, Stang instead walked into a meeting room full of individuals who all had their noses in his renovation plans.
“There was someone from Parks and Recreation who wanted to see another driveway put in, then someone else from the City who was okay with the driveway, but preferred something else. There were people there I needed to talk to about having the building redesignated as residential — everyone,” he laughs.
“It’s not unusual to be dealing with that many people when you’re taking on a project like this,” says Darryl Cariou, senior heritage planner with the City of Calgary, who easily rattles off a list of titles, including file manager with the City, community planner, transportation people, sewer and building code personnel, all whom have a stake — and a say — when a heritage building is being renovated.
When one looks at the list of players, compounded by the process itself, it becomes clear why most people opt for a less unique home in the suburbs.
“Zoning is the first issue you have to take care of before you can do anything else,” Cariou explains. “When you’re taking a commercially zoned building and rezoning it to residential, you’re downzoning it, that is you’re reducing the intensity of use The advantage is there’s a very strong appetite at City Council to encourage conservation of Calgary’s historic resources. It’s much more difficult to convert a house to a commercial building.”
Still, as with anything that crawls across City desks, the process can drag on. After the zoning hurdle, the next one is applying for a development permit — another time-sucker — before you can even think about where that sleek built-in should go, or whether the countertop should be stainless steel or concrete.
Next, there’s the building permit and, well, you get the picture.
Stang was smart to get everyone into one room, but after that meeting, he was suitably overwhelmed to pass off his plans to an architect, who came up with the drawings based on the proverbial napkin drawing from Stang.
Accommodating everything from prison-worthy windows of glass blocks to satisfy fire regulations (they had to be brought in from Germany) to $5,000 new curbs, they had the place gutted down to bare walls, preserving little more than the fir floors. Then the creation of the new space began, taking about eight months until the family deemed it habitable.
Like any labour of love on a house, the reno is ongoing. Fortunately, they’ve been joined in the labour over the years by Stang’s father, Ed, who helped with a lot of the work.
The fir floors, complete with the (now boarded-up) hole where the fire pole was, provide a rich anchor to the open-concept living space. And those German glass window tiles do shine a fine light on the modern kitchen and its stunning overhead beams (Stang’s favourite original feature). But even those lovely beams had started to sag by 1999 and had to be reinforced with steel.
The couple radiates calm nonchalance as they relive the renovation, which is admirable, given they couldn’t even get a mortgage forthe place when they bought it until it was rezoned to residential.
Given the difficulties of creating a modern home out of a heritage commercial or industrial space, these types of conversions are more often about gut instincts and a desire for a unique home than the practicalities that drive other homeowners.
A few blocks away from the former fire hall, Emma Greenstreet happened upon a 1911 store and instantly knew it was to be her home.
“I saw it as a building with character and age, unusual in Calgary,” she says. “It was a step of faith as I bought it without too much professional checking. I had a good, sound feeling about it.”
Greenstreet spent the next six years jumping through many of the same hurdles Stang and Waring had, but ultimately transformed it into a “casual and open” home, while converting four downstairs rooms into a studio space. Uncovering a beautiful tin roof, and keeping the original doors were just a few bonuses.
“I miss the space very much,” says Greenstreet, who now lives in London, in a flat reminiscent of her beloved Bridgeland conversion.
Most Calgarians will never have the chance to wade through the ups and downs of converting a heritage home when setting up their corner of the world. But as Calgary tries to shake off its reputation for ripping down anything that previously earned us our “Sandstone City” moniker, there have been more conversions of heritage buildings to condos, arts venues, offices and retail outlets.
John Brown is a registered architect, professor of architecture at the University of Calgary, editor of theslowhome.com and founder of the Slow Home Movement, an international movement devoted to bringing good design into real life.
On the Slow Home website, he writes: “In the same way that slow food raises awareness of the food we eat and how these choices affect our lives, Slow Home provides design-focused information to empower each of us to take more control of our homes and improve the quality of where and how we live.”
Brown likes what he sees happening to old buildings in Calgary. And while some might say converting older buildings to residences is trendy, he doesn’t agree. Instead, he notes that it’s an indication of Calgary’s maturity, pointing out we are only now seeing buildings that are 50 to 100 years old. In many cases, preserving old buildings is well worth it — but not simply for sentimental or romantic reasons.
“Converting an existing building is always going to be more difficult and perhaps more costly than taking the cookie-cutter solution,” Brown says in an interview. “There are technical issues with use permits and fire codes and land use permits and contemporary zoning. It is an inherently Slow Home approach.
“But, in the end, you can look at something you really appreciate, and you are being a bit of a maverick. The payoff is much more interesting, unique and valuable.”
Brown doesn’t agree every old building should be revered and preserved. He is in the business of creating new homes, as well as renovating, after all.
“If you don’t bash down some buildings, then you live in a museum,” he says. “Some things are around for a very long time. The process has to have its own rhythm. If a city has some sort of planning process in place that you cannot build anything new, then it becomes a theme park. That’s the difference between Rome and Milan. Barcelona is another example. There a respect for the old but it’s not some sort of reverence. Neither position is sustainable, or realistic.”
Cariou, who has decades of experience preserving heritage architecture, agrees. “We’re not in the museum business . . . what we’re primarily interested in is the public aspects of these buildings,” he says. “People want modern kitchens and bathrooms.
We do take an active role in some building interiors when we are looking at character-defining elements.
“But heritage does not trump safety, and there are sometimes compromises that have to be made. There is room for a modern house to fit into an older neighbourhood, and vice versa.”
Cariou and Brown both talk about looking beyond the structure itself, and taking into account the variables in the community.
That’s something that was also front-of-mind for the LeBlond Partnership when they converted a 1908 schoolhouse in downtown Fernie into upscale loft-style townhouse condos, a project called 901 Fernie.
When LeBlond took the former eyesore and, through a decidedly hands-on approach, converted it to modern condos, the community was thrilled. Simon Howse, a partner and CEO, had already won over the hearts of the community with his renovation of the historic Fernie Hotel, says project sales manager Vaughn Lessard.
“The City was extremely cooperative,” says Lessard. “It was an ugly old building that had a terrible renovation done to it in the ’70s. It used to be referred to as the big Atco trailer because of the colours. The community was very excited about [the redevelopment].”
With architect Nick Vale LeBlond’s vision, and partners Tony Dennis and Jason Smith — both experienced tradespeople — working on-site on a daily basis during the renovation, the project has taken shape and now encompasses 36 different floor plans in 44 condo units.
With panoramic views, an on-site spa, outdoor radiant in-slab heat, huge windows and jammed with high-end conveniences,
the building is a far cry from the reading-‘riting-‘rithmetic sensibility of its inception. There is, in fact, little to remind dwellers of the building’s history from inside, save for the original brick interior wall visible in each unit.
“Everything inside is new. We have replicated the old schoolhouse windows outside. They have a beautiful feel inside, and the first two storeys have ceilings that are 12.5 feet high. The other suites have ceilings that range from nine to 14.5 feet,” says Lessard.
Lessard wasn’t involved with any of the development hurdles the owners may have had to overcome to move forward with this renovation, which is being completed in phases. But he shares the community’s respect and reverence for the old schoolhouse, noting the outside structure of the edifice “hadn’t moved for 100 years. Back then, the schoolhouse was the grandest of them all.”
If the developers have their way, the building may once again rise to that reputation.
And while architects, designers and developers speak of spaces and buildings having a “sense of” something, whether it’s a sense of place, a sense of community or a sense of timelessness, in the end, it is the inhabitants of those spaces who create that inimitable “sense” of something on their own terms — and in their own time.
