Sometimes, old buildings just have to come down.
"These decisions are never just spontaneously made at one meeting," said Mayor Malcolm Eaton. "It's a lengthy process and takes years to figure out."
With the recent demolition of the old Humboldt Public School building, and the Sutherland Theatre before that, some residents in town expressed frustration, even anger, toward the City of Humboldt for not preserving the buildings.
Suffice to say that in almost all of these situations, the goal isn't to demolish a historic building on a whim, but rather for much more practical reasons.
Take the old St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Humboldt, for instance.
Originally run by the Sisters of St. Elizabeth for the Saskatchewan Catholic Health Corporation, it changed hands when the Saskatoon Health Region took over in 2007 and it became the Humboldt District Hospital.
Around this time, even years before it, it was decided that a new hospital was needed.
But not just by the "higher-ups" in the city.
"Citizens were actually very involved in the process of what to do with the hospital," said Eaton. "There was a board made up of community members from all over - dignitaries, engineers, residents, architects, representatives from the health regionmany people."
Through these years-long meetings, it was determined that there are things required of modern-day hospitals that an older one, like the Humboldt District Hospital, wouldn't be able to provide.
"We engaged with architects and engineers who toured through the hospital and analyzed its advantages and disadvantages," Eaton explained.
In the end, the bad outweighed the good and, due to costs of repair plus the expense of modernizing the hospital, it was better to just start from scratch and build a new one.
Same idea for Humboldt Public School.
Being a landmark in the city for more than a century, many former students, teachers, residents and the like no doubt had a soft spot for the building.
But that aside, said Eaton, the building had fallen into such disrepair that unfortunately the preservation of it was essentially out of the question.
"The lower level had huge moisture problems, which caused a large amount of mold and mildew in the building," Eaton said. "The foundation had cracks and was crumbling apart because it wasn't built to today's standards. And once you have moisture issues and an unsteady foundation, there's really nothing that can be done to reverse that."Fire Chief Mike Kwasnica echoed Eaton's statement that the building was too far-gone.
Kwasnica, who conducts routine fire safety inspections on buildings, said that the school's roof, for instance, was a major concern for engineers.
"Over time, it just deteriorated and its structure became a big concern," Kwasnica said.
On top of that, the upstairs part of the school, which years ago housed the caretakers, the Urquharts, hadn't been used for quite some time.
"It was really dirty and unkempt and just not a good place for students," Eaton said, also mentioning practical factors, like the lack of an elevator in the school, played a roll.
"The mobility of students was only up and down the stairs, which can be a big problem for those in wheelchairs or on crutches," said Eaton.
Nowadays, most modern schools that are more than one storey are equipped with an elevator to combat this problem.
With many older buildings, its outcome is determined the second the foundation is laid; in this case for Humboldt Public School, that was over 100 years ago, in 1912.
"Yeah, it's easy to say 'Well we should have started work on it 20 years ago' but that just didn't happen," Eaton said. "Buildings weren't built to today's standards back in the early 1900s."
Kwasnica said that to renovate buildings to specific modern safety standards, it can cost millions of dollars of tax-payer's money.
"The building codes would have to be brought up to date to modernize the building, and a lot of the time that just isn't feasible financially," he said.
Strict building codes are routine for every building constructed nowadays but back when the original Humboldt Public School was being established in the early 20th century, they didn't exist.
"Building standards weren't around back then," Kwasnica said, which causes a big issue as the years go by and safety criteria in buildings is updated.
So naturally, safety codes aside, the financial cost of renovating a building to modern standards is always the major concern of preservation; it's easy to want a historical building preserved but is it realistic?
"A lot of the time, the cost is just too much,"Kwasnica said. "People will easily say they want to see a building renovated instead of torn down but ask them if the City can add an extra $250 to their property taxes in order to pay for it. That's the reality of it."
Eaton mentioned something similar: many people are eager to see older buildings around town avoid the wrecking ball, unless the money to do so is coming out of their own pocket. A lot of the times, it'd just plain and simply cost tax payers too much money.
That being said, Kwasnica pointed out an important fact: Humboldt Public School is not on city grounds, as it's owned by Horizon School Division.
It's a critical thing to understand, as its demolition was in the end the decision of the school board, but it also plays into the question of 'Why not just turn the building into something else?'
Well, first off, the expense of it was clearly a major factor.
But secondly, even if renovations could have been carried out, it couldn't have been used for anything other than its original intent: a school.
"It was on school board grounds, so we wouldn't have been able to turn it into housing or some other need," said Eaton.
"The school division has very limited property, so tearing down the old one and building condos or something isn't going to happen either."
Another important thing to note is that as much as people had gripes about the demolition of the school after the fact, no one came to the City of Humboldt, or the school division before that to express an interest in preserving it, said Eaton.
"The historic water tower in town, the old Merchants Bank buildingthose were all preserved because the public expressed an interest in doing so. Informal committees were established to raise funds to do that and the costs weren't insurmountable, as they were with the old public school," Eaton said.
But with the old public school, costs aside, the interest just wasn't there to preserve it, Eaton said.
"Instead of focusing on the few buildings that unfortunately had to come down, people need to take a look at what we've preserved," Eaton said. "Humboldt has such history and I think not just [the City of Humboldt], but the local residents do a fantastic job at keeping that history alive," he said, mentioning of course the water tower, the new art gallery in the old Merchants Bank building, the cemetery at the St. Elizabeth's property, the court house, the war archives in the Legion building and of course, the old post office building that houses the Humboldt & District Museum & Gallery, just to name a few.
An older building integral to Humboldt's past is of course the old CN station, which has fallen into such ruin that it's been dubbed an "eyesore" to the community.
But, said Eaton, it's not because the City hasn't turned its attention to it.
The dilapidated train station is presently still owned by CN and is a heritage railway station, which means it would take quite a bit of paperwork with the government to have it demolished, if the City purchased the building from CN; that's also if CN was willing to fork it over.
And the fate of the building has been discussed with residents but like Humboldt Public School, it seems many people are just indifferent on what to do with it.
"We had town hall meetings in 2011 to discuss what should be done with the building if we had possession of it," Eaton said. "Only 17 people showed up."
On top of that, numerous experts have visited the old station to analyze its condition.
"We've had everyone in there - engineers, the museum board, building inspectorsyou name it, they've been in there to examine it," Eaton said.
The conclusion? It's in bad shape. Really bad.
"It would need an entirely new foundation," Eaton said. "And we don't need another museum," so the reasons for preserving the building start to dwindle.
"If we purchased the building from CN, it would cost an enormous chunk of money to renovate it. It needs extensive work and it's not even clear that that can happen," Eaton said.
So presently, the building still sits in CN's hands and the City is waiting to see if anyone will come forward with a laid out objective on how to save it. So far, no one has.
"Over a period of time, we'll start to really look into it but we're not rushing" Eaton said. In the meantime, city workers maintain the building and its outside grounds, like cutting the grass and picking up trash that may be laying around it, in order to prevent it from further becoming a hideous shell of its former self.
As Eaton and Kwasnica have said, the demolition of older buildings near and dear to people's hearts is sometimes inevitable.
"I'm a Prairie boy and anyone growing up out here knows that every prairie town had two things: a railway and a grain elevator," Kwasnica said. "Well nowadays, you're hard-pressed to find those old grain elevators anymore. Over time, they just had to come down. It's sad, sure, but it's just part of life."
So for all the heritage buildings that are preserved, there's bound to be some that are beyond a quick fixer-upper.
"Bottom line is that you can't save them all, even if you want to," Eaton said.
