Former Cape Breton Post building is up for sale.
Former Cape Breton Post building has had its interior gutted for potential redevelopment
A concrete and brick façade bunker at 75 Dorchester St. was placed on the market earlier this month for $495,000.
The building, which sits in front of the bus terminal for Transit Cape Breton, has been vacant and boarded up for at least two decades.
It was built to house the Cape Breton Post office in 1900, however the newspaper relocated to its current office space in 1985.
The building is now owned by Bidart Safety Supply Ltd., which had operated from its basement at one time. The property is currently assessed at $102,100.
There’s 18,750 square feet of space available on three floors. On the inside, the real estate listing says, “partitions and walls have been removed from the interior, leaving many opportunities for development” of the building.
Sydney Waterfront District regeneration co-ordinator Bradley Murphy said the building holds promise if the right developer was to come along.
“It’s in pretty rough condition,” meaning a total rebuild from the inside, he said in an interview Monday.
“The fact there’s a for sale sign on the building shows they’re ready to sell it. Hopefully, it’ll encourage somebody who has a really good idea and some money to do something.”
The building is without a heating system, and many windows are broken allowing birds and other critters to nest inside.
There have been private proposals in the past to redevelop the building into much-needed housing in downtown Sydney, but plans have never gotten past the concept stage.
A recent survey of downtown Sydney showed there were 221 housing units and the vast majority of those were located in the 12-storey Vista Heights apartment complex on the Esplanade, Murphy said.
Part of his job is to get a sense of how much available commercial and potential residential real estate is available to be developed.
There’s a total of 221,577 square feet of vacant commercial/residential space in the downtown, which translates to a vacancy rate of about 17 per cent.
Murphy said the vacancy rate could be significantly higher as much of the 1,083,597 square feet of occupied space is being used as storage space.
The Cape Breton Regional Municipality is working at creating
300 residential units in the downtown over the next 15 years.
Deputy Mayor Eldon MacDonald, who represents downtown Sydney on municipal council, said a developer looked at buying the property last summer. His concept was to transform it into 35 residential units but he ended up buying other properties on nearby Charlotte Street.
MacDonald said engineering reports have shown the former newspaper office building to be structurally sound but finding a developer willing to take on a project of this size has been a challenge.
“We haven’t been able to find anybody and as a municipality we haven’t searched hard for that. I spoke to the mayor just a couple of weeks back wondering if there might be some opportunity for a developer,” said MacDonald.
“The last thing we need is another empty space that’s just dirt in the downtown. Ultimately, I’d like to see it reoccupied.”
Over the past 10 months, he said he’s increasingly received more complaints on the state of the building and what will be done with it.
Preliminary estimates peg a potential demolition at $200,000 — double the total cost the CBRM allocates each year to tearing down unsightly and dangerous structures.
MacDonald said if the building is not sold in “a reasonable amount of time,” the municipality will have to begin the discussion of demolition with the owner.
The building was the centre of an illegal pot-growing operation that resulted in a drug bust in May 2004.
Cape Breton Regional Police seized and destroyed 215 pot plants worth an estimated $500,000. Police believed the aeroponics operation — a technique of growing the plant without soil or hydroponic material — had been in the building for some time.
The Cape Breton Post attempted to reach the building’s owner Geoffrey Bidart for comment but calls were not returned.