Should this building be saved?
Paula Simons thinks so
Don’t sacrifice architectural past in rush to build city’s future The empty Healy Ford building at 10616 103rd Ave. may not look like a typical heritage site. But the former auto showroom is actually a remarkable part of downtown Edmonton’s architectural history.
The clean-lined red brick International Style building, with Tyndall Stone trim and long horizontal windows, was built in 1947, for the Massey-Harris company, the forerunner of Massey Ferguson. The company wanted a landmark building symbolic of its role in northern Alberta’s agricultural postwar boom. It hired two of the city’s leading architects: Richard Palin Blakey and his brother William.
R.P. Blakey was a former provincial architect, who had designed the lieutenantgovernor’s mansion and the legislature’s marble staircase and rotunda. Younger brother William also built some impressive buildings in an ornate Old World idiom, including the Masonic Hall, the old Edmonton Journal building, and the Christ Church Anglican Church in Oliver.
But in the 1940s, the brothers had a road-to-Damascus architectural conversion. They started working in a different idiom. Their Massey-Harris Building was one of Edmonton’s first modernist buildings. It was inspired by Le Corbusier’s 1929 Villa Savoye, north of Paris, from which it borrows several design elements, including the supporting podiums on columns and the dramatic horizontal windows.
Today, the original Villa Savoye is a French national monument.
Edmonton’s homage to Le Corbusier isn’t faring quite so well. Healy Ford moved out of the space to a new location in Sherwood Park in 2011, leaving the huge space sadly empty. While the building is on the city’s register of historic resources, that status gives it no protection from demolition.
Last month, Edmonton commercial real estate company CBRE announced it had nearly completed a deal to sell the 75,000-square-foot site to Rise Real Easte Inc. of Ancaster, Ont.
Rise specializes in furnished off-campus apartments for the student market in Ontario university towns like Waterloo and London. According to CBRE, Rise intends to put up three highrise towers, with a total of 330 student housing units.
Rise spokesman Eric Reiner won’t confirm or deny the CBRE report. As yet, the city has received no application for a demolition or development permit.
Still, Edmonton’s heritage community is concerned by any prospect of losing an important Blakey and Blakey legacy.
Robert Geldart, Edmonton’s principal heritage planner, says the only way to guarantee the building’s future would be for the city to buy the property for its full market value. Instead, he’s encouraging any future developer to include or incorporate the existing structure, possibly as the podium of a new tower.
“Right now, it does look very boring and very basic. It’s looking really shabby. But think what it could look like if they cleaned it up,” says Geldart. “It could be lobby space or studio space or recreational space for students.”
“I’d love to see this kept. I think it’s an incredible opportunity to add character to the street.”
The site is in the Urban Warehouse zone. According to city policy, the warehouse district is supposed to offer “a walkable, human-scaled-built environment” that respects the architectural characteristics of the area. Developers are allowed to build highrises of up to 15 storeys, but anything higher requires special permission. One of the few options the planning department might have would be to offer any new owner the chance to build something taller, in exchange for saving the existing structure.
Certainly, the locale seems ideal for student housing. It’s within walking distance of MacEwan University and Norquest College, and accessible, by LRT, from the University of Alberta and NAIT. An injection of boisterous student life spur economic growth in the neighbourhood. We need more residential development in the downtown core. But we would be foolish to do it by sacrificing a wickedly cool building that gives the neighbourhood part of its unique esthetic.
Scott McKeen, councillor for downtown’s Ward 6, wants to see a compromise.
“I hope the developer can incorporate and honour that history in more than just a token way,” he says. “I’m very interested to hear from the developer about how they might do that. Council would be much more amenable to something if it preserved more of what is there.”
As for Rise’s Reiner? While he won’t confirm his firm is buying the site, he points proudly to Rise’s previous developments.
“People may be pleasantly surprised at the effort Rise has made to incorporate its buildings into the local environment.”
Let’s hope that’s a hint Edmonton’s architectural past won’t fall victim, yet again, to the rush to build its future.