When then-mayor Dave Bronconnier signed Bylaw 37M2008 on July 14, 2008, heritage advocates in a city with a reputation for failing to preserve its past breathed a sign of relief.
The bylaw designated a 27-metre tall brick smokestack in Eau Claire as a municipal historic resource — legally protecting the structure from removal, relocation, alteration or destruction.
But Calgary city council is now being asked to remove the heritage designation and if they decide to, it will mark the first time a municipally protected site in Alberta is de-designated.
The request, which is scheduled to go before a council committee this month, has been in the works since 2015 amid Harvard Developments’ extensive plans for a mega-development in Eau Claire.
Artist’s rendering for the proposed development on Eau Claire Market site in 2013.
Stripping the 70-year-old, red-brick chimney structure at the intersection of Second Avenue and Barclay Parade S.W. of its heritage protection has advocates worried about what precedent this case creates.
“The issue here isn’t the smokestack,” said Chris Edwards, the vice-president and co-founder of the Calgary Heritage Initiative. “It’s the fact that it is a protected heritage site, and now that protection is possibly being removed.”
De-designating a legally protected resource raises questions for Edwards about the value of the work heritage volunteers and the city put into safeguarding old homes, buildings and structures.
“Designation is supposed to be permanent, it’s supposed to be the final destination of a path which includes scouring the city for potential heritage sites, identifying them, paying for a professional heritage evaluation to confirm if it does indeed qualify to be on the city’s inventory, and then finally legal protection,” he said.
Edwards wonders, if this heritage designation can be rescinded simply because the smokestack’s location is inconvenient for developers, what does that mean for other protected pieces of Calgary’s past?
Eau Claire’s 27-metre red brick smokestack built in 1947 in Calgary on Friday, March 31, 2017.
Clint Robertson, senior heritage planner for the city, said if approved by council, the smokestack would be de-designated so it can be moved about 15 metres to the southwest, onto a City of Calgary parcel that’s marked as a road right of way.
Once the designation bylaw is repealed, a so-called preservation agreement between the city and Harvard Developments would be put in place to protect the smokestack while it’s moved and it’s the intention of the city to re-designate the smokestack in its new location.
“This is a very specific example where we’re moving the smokestack a very small distance. It’s remaining in its historical context,” Robertson said.
“We need to be flexible and this allows development of the site, which a lot of people want, and it does preserve the smokestack.”
