112-year-old Kamloops house saved from demolition on the move
A 112-year-old Kamloops house has been saved from demolition and its new owner says the price point and its heritage made him decide to preserve a piece of Kamloops history.
Paul Berry, a long-time Kamloops resident, decided to purchase one of the old homes that have been slated for demolition in downtown Kamloops to make room for the construction of Kelson Group’s new City Gardens, the largest residential development in the city.
Kelson Group has been collaborating with Nickel Bros., a residential and industrial structural moving company, to find interested homeowners for the houses that can be relocated. On Dec. 5, 2021, Nickel Bros. lifted and relocated the first house from 430 Nicola Street to the new homeowner’s property in McLure.
Tonight starting at 1:00am this home, built in 1910, is going to be put on the back of a truck and moved down battle street. It will be a once in a lifetime opportunity to see something like this in #kamloops . My alarm is set! pic.twitter.com/Uj52PJVzEO — Mike O'Reilly - Kamloops City Councillor (@mikeoreilly2018) March 4, 2022
The second home, a beautiful Edwardian foursquare-style house, was moved only a few blocks from 435 Battle Street in the early morning, Saturday, March 5, to its new home on St. Paul Street.
Recycling an old house in this way has saved roughly 40% of the costs it would have taken to build a similar style house on the lot, Berry said. The property already had two tiny homes and he thought the historical home could replace one of the them.
“You’re paying for basically the cost to move the house,” he said. When viewing the home he loved it's open floor plan, an unusual find for a 112-year-old structure, and its large four bedrooms.
About 40-50% of the homes wiring and plumbing are still usable and it will be easy to renovate since everything is exposed, Berry said, adding a new furnace had also been added to the home in the last few years so that was an added bonus. The house will also need a foundation.
“This one had some cost savings built into it as well,” he said.
A mix-up between Nickel Bros. and a remediation team meant the team already removed plaster and some walls prior to it being moved. A house of that size would otherwise have been a $60,000 to $70,000 remediation cost, so they worked out a deal and removed most of the interior walls, making it much easier to renovate, Berry said.
“Construction costs for years have gone absolutely crazy so it makes way more sense now than even three years ago to do something like this,” he said.
Once renovations are complete, the house will be rented out, potentially this summer, Berry said.
“It’s a real shame to see most of the other ones except one, get crushed. It is viable, but you have to have a bit of… a hardy will and I think you have to have the right lot in place because the timeframes are really tight as well to make something like this happen,” he said. “Anytime something like this happens and people see it as successful, it’s going to create more interest.”
The house’s original owners, Robert and Flossie MacKay, were prominent figures of the Kamloops community. “Robert MacKay set up his business building houses and then the Bank of Commerce, Old Opera House, 1906 Stuart Wood School, 1911, Leland Hotel, 1911, Royal Bank of Canada, Burris Block, Smith Block, Freemont Block, Mallory Drug Store, Royal Inland Hospital, Patricia Hotel, Acadia Block, and Masonic Block in 1923," according to a press release from Kelson Group.
Robert's busy construction business didn’t stop him from being very involved in fraternal and civic affairs. He joined the Knights of Pythias Lodge in 1894 and was associated with the Kamloops volunteer Fire Department from 1894 until 1918 and was the Chief for 17 years. Civic affairs also led him to become an alderman in 1905 and 1906.
One of MacKay's grandchildren has been in contact with Berry and is interested in what is happening with the home. “It’ll be neat to figure and find out some information historically,” he said.
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Berry loves old houses and has restored old homes in the past but it's his first time moving an old home to a new location.
“There are things about these houses that are crazy, (like) the craftsmanship. When you think about 1910, they didn’t have the tooling that they have now, yet the craftsmanship is incredible,” he said. “This house is made out of fir opposed to pine. Fir is stronger wood and it has a tighter grain.”
For the process to move the former house of the MacKay’s, Nickel Bros. installed a structural support system and a hydraulic jacking system to the foundation of the house. Both elevated the structure and slide the house out of the property.
Then the team loaded it on a hydraulic moving system to deliver the house to its new location.
Berry said he watched part of the moving process.
“It’s crazy, but it’s a pretty substantial size and when it got down to that end of St. Paul Street and it’s up against the houses down there, you realize how big it is,” he said.
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