North Battleford’s planning and development director, Jennifer Niesink, says another downtown demolition is likely in the coming year.
The building that housed the old Longhorn Steakhouse will come down in 2018, she said during a budget deliberation meeting at City Hall last week.
The building is currently owned by the city through tax enforcement, but Niesink said no one with both the desire and means to save that building has been found. There is also an engineering report as well that says the building isn’t salvageable.
“It’s becoming an increasing liability and it is crumbling before our eyes,” said Niesink. “We can’t expect other people to be responsible if we’re not going to deal with our buildings.”
It also shares a common wall with another building; likely, that other building will have to go as well. Discussions will happen with the owner of that property.
Already demolished is the former Dollarwise location at 1142-101st Street. That demolition took place in November.
Tom Hutchison of Magic Lantern Theatres in Edmonton told the News-Optimist the main reason for tearing it down was cost.
“We don’t normally like to tear buildings down, but this one would take half a million dollars to put back together and there really isn’t much of a building there to begin with,” said Hutchinson at the time.
