Sites Announced for Doors Open Guelph 2013

The annual Doors Open Guelph Event is taking place Saturday April 27th from 10 to 4, one of several similar events taking place in 200 communities across Ontario later this month. But here in the Royal City, the Guelph Arts Council has revealed the list of sites for this year's 12th annual event.

Christmas Cheer

I've accused recently of perhaps being bereft, to a degree, of the nominal cheeriness of the holiday season. But then I saw this tonight on a jaunt to the Red Brick Cafe downtown and thought to myself, "Well isn't this nice." I've often thought of the crane over the new and improved Gummer Building to be pretty much an eyesore, especially during those long years where nothing was being done with it. But on the other hand, it's nice that the construction crew decided to give it a bit of Christmas flare. Check it out next time you're downtown.

What's This...?

Something strange happened yesterday, I someone in a hard hat on the Gummer Building construction site. And today, there's new fencing up, sounds of tools clanging, and is the crane in a different position than it was once in? I think it might be, which could mean that after nearly three years of going nowhere fast, the construction along Douglas St on the (should be by now) newly refurbished Gummer Building is underway once more.

I think the hows and whys of the Gummer reconstruction and ceasing there of have been pretty well covered by myself and others, so let me just take a moment to utter a sigh of relief. I know the people that live and work along there will be glad to be rid of the eyesore that is the hollowed out husk of a building with its new skeleton, that was supposed to be the start of a building. And let's not forget the ugly construction fence that was slowly getting uglier due to neglect. Given the fact that I see it every day, to me, economic recovery really begins when construction on this site gets back into a full swing. Here's hoping.

The Crane Also Rises

Now, over four years after a fire destroyed the historic Gummer Building downtown, and nearly two years after all construction on the rebuilding project ceased, comes news that the massive crane over the Guelph skyline will move once more.

“We’re going to get going as soon as possible,” chief operations officer Jason Ashdown said. “I hope to give the crane a test run (Wednesday) and be back under construction within two to three weeks.” 

That's good news for all us downtown dwellers who've had to look at the burnt out, though half-constructed, husk of the Gummer Building for two years and wonder when (of ever) construction would ever get going again. 

Tuesday's announcement seems to stem from a decision Monday night by city council to allow Gummer project owners, Skyline, to convert apartment units in a Yarmouth St. building into condos in exchange for creating 20 new rental units in the Gummer Building. Skyline will also take up office space in the new building, along with previously announced tenants, The Co-operators, who are moving staff from an office on Scottsdale Drive to the core. 

The historic Gummer Building was destroyed by fire on Good Friday, April 6th, 2007. A consortium of Skyline employees later purchased the building for redevelopment, getting tax credits form the city for preserving the historic visage. Construction ceased in the Summer of 2008 as the Global Recession started heating up and funds started drying up. 

We shall if the prophets are right, and the great construction crane in the sky will move again soon.

Gummer Remembered

"Is that crane still there?"

That's what a colleague of mine remarked one day as we headed to Red Brick Cafe for some refreshment. Yes, the crane is still there. And yes, it hasn't moved in about a year and a half. When global markets melted and recession seas rose, all work on the bricks and mortar formally known as The Gummer Building ceased.

It's been about a week since the third anniversary of the fire that burned out all but the mere façade of the historic Gummer Building. The promised replacement, a modern office building that incorporated the surviving structure, has yet to see fruition. In fact, a deal to secure an "anchor tenant" in the form of the Co-operators has yet to be even reached.

But I didn't come here today to recite the politics and economics of the Gummer re-building - Scott Tracey did a pretty good job of that in last Thursday's Mercury - I came here to give a visual retrospective.

April 6th, 2007 was Good Friday that year. And this was the Easter Present received by both business owners and people living in the apartments above.



In the aftermath the next Monday, I got these shots of the building along Douglas Street. What struck me was juxtaposition of burnt out building covered with ice from all the water doused on the fire to put it out. It was a weird and eerie but kind of beautiful sight as I recall.

Flash-forward three years later. I took these shots on Friday evening and what I saw was a building that was well on its way to completion. I hadn't been back behind the Gummer Building in a while, and I was expecting to something that was still a mostly burnt out shell. Not this though. I'm a fan of architeture, and what I see here is a building desperately crying out to be completed.

Despite all the reasons why not, I'd love to see construction on the Gummer begin again. If nothing else, let's get to a point in construction where that ungodly crane can be taken down and taken away.