DOWNTOWN REGINA HAD LONG HISTORY OF BEING HOME TO CAR DEALERSHIPS
Businesses are long gone, but the signs and stories remain, says Dale Edward Johnson.
Downtown Regina used to be the place to buy a new car — and if you look closely, you can still see some of the signs of these old car dealerships.
For example, on the southwest corner of Albert Street and Victoria Avenue on the Viterra Building, there’s a brass plaque that tells the story of how this building was once home to Bothwell Motors.
The building was constructed in 1913 as the Sherwood Department Store, but then a recession hit and the doors closed in 1916. It was used to store military supplies during the First World War. In the 1920s the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool bought the building and had offices on the top two floors and rented out the main floor. One of the tenants was Bothwell Motors, which opened 90 years ago in the summer of 1928. This is where people could buy new Desotos, Auburns and Acme trucks.
But the stock market crashed a little over a year after it opened, and a few months later, Bothwell Motors went out of business.
On the northeast corner of Albert and 12th Avenue is the Neil Professional Building. The name honours Neil Motors, which used to be on the site. This was the third location for Neil Motors in Regina. The fatherand-son team of Albert and Bert Neil started in the car business in Saskatoon in 1927. They moved to Regina in 1934 and began selling Dodges and Desotos at what now is the Vintage Vinyl building at Smith Street and 11th Avenue.
If you look closely at the back of this building, you can still see the Neil Motors sign.
This building had been home to a couple of car dealerships before the Neil Motors signs went up.
For a time, it was Grey-Campbell, a Dodge, Plymouth and Chrysler dealership that folded in 1933. Then it was taken over by Regina Victory Motors, another Dodge dealer. When the owner, Alexander Angott, landed the Hudson franchise, he built a new place on the northwest corner of 11th Avenue and Smith Street, where a CIBC Call Centre is located. Then Neil Motors took over the Vintage Vinyl building.
By 1936, they were selling
300 vehicles a year and opened another dealership across 11th Avenue. On the site today is a building that houses the Open Door Society and a restaurant.
Later, Neil Motors added a third location at Albert and 12th, where the Neil Professional Building now is.
At Rose Street and 12th Avenue, a big old red-brick building opened in 1929 as Regina’s new General Motors dealership.
Plans had been announced in January 1929 for this new dealership, shortly after GM opened its assembly plant in Regina, which is also still standing at Winnipeg Street and 8th Avenue.
The new dealership, which cost $255,000 to build, opened just as the stock market crashed. But GM was able to weather the Depression better than most other automakers, largely due to the variety of products it offered.
In 1966, Mid-west Motors, Regina’s Pontiac-buick- GMC dealer, moved from Rose and
12th to Albert, north of Dewdney. It later became Eisbrenner and then Capital, and then it moved to Pasqua and Rochdale.
This red-brick building, which was once billed as “Canada’s Finest Equipped Garage,” now is almost 90 years old and home to several organizations, including the Regina Hotel Association and Women Entrepreneurs of Saskatchewan.
In many larger cities, downtown dealerships are making a return, often as satellite showrooms for dealerships in the suburbs. The idea is to have a small showroom with two or three vehicles on display to catch the eye of people working or living downtown. For example, in Saskatoon, the former Bay store has been converted into condominiums, and in the corner of the main floor there is a Fiat showroom.
Time will tell if this trend emerges in Regina as well — and if it does, there are several buildings that would be ideal to once again become car showrooms in downtown Regina.
Dale Edward Johnson will be leading a Heritage Regina Summer Walking Tour of downtown car dealerships on Saturday, July 14, starting at 6 p.m. at the southwest corner of Albert Street and Victoria Avenue, in front of the bronze plaque on the Viterra Building. The walk will last about one hour and 30 minutes.