Former stables from 1906 levelled for road project
Building demolished to make way for wider Clement Avenue
A little piece of Kelowna history disappeared this week when former horse stables built in 1906 were demolished at the corner of Clement Avenue and Ethel Street.
You might have known it most recently as the 10-year home of the Lois Lane second-hand furniture and antiques store.
But it also had incarnations a decade before that as the shop and showroom for Malibu Boats, a stint as a Highways Ministry shop and yard and, more than a century ago, as its original use storing hay and stabling horses.
The building at one time was handsome and featured beautiful wooden ceiling beams, which owner Zeljko Gregov salvaged as it was torn down.
“It’s a shame we had to put it down,” said Gregov, “but it was old and not in very good shape.
“The city gave me the heads-up that part of the land was going to be needed for the widening of Clement Avenue and advised the building should probably come down.”
Gregov has owned the 0.3-hectare plot for 15 years, not quite knowing what to do with it.
He owns the adjacent business, Mark V Autobody, but not the land it’s on.
He bought the old stables at the corner thinking it, or the land it was on, might be valuable one day.
He dallied with the idea it might make a good country-style pub, but nothing ever came of it.
He’s now thinking, once the city takes what it needs for the road four-laning, that it might make a good strip for artist studios or even a shop and museum site for fruit juice and snack maker SunRype, which is located just a little north on Ethel Street.
He expects a deal with the city to get a bit of land on the backside of the property to make up for the chunk it takes for the widening.
Gregov is also unsure if he and his son will redevelop the property of if he should sell it to someone else for redevelopment.