The former Continental Hotel on Second Avenue South was demolished on Thursday after the Saskatoon Fire Department deemed it unsafe.
“It wasn’t really that we decided to, it was that we were put in a position where we had to take action,” Yvonne Raymer, assistant chief with the Saskatoon Fire Department said.
Raymer says the building had an order for it to be demolished by the owner after an assessment and timelines weren’t met “to the full scope of what it should.”
“We started to monitor situations where people were being allowed to do the work inside the building and according to the structural engineer it was not safe to do so,” Ramer said.
The fire department says the lateral load of the building was “not guaranteed and may have been compromised and that it was at risk of partial or full collapse at any point.”
The former Continental Hotel on Second Avenue South was demolished April 28, 2022. (Miriam Valdes-Carletti/CTV Saskatoon)
Raymer says complaints about the safety of the building first came from the public years ago.
The hotel is believed to contain historical items but the assistant fire chief says the building is not on the Saskatoon Registry of Historic Places and is too unsafe to allow to stand.
The building used to be a rooming house and in 1933 became the Yale Hole. It was later called the Continental Hotel until it closed in 2007. Mark Bobyn, the current owner of the building, purchased the property with plans to refurbish the building. Bobyn did not respond to a request for comment.
“It was a place where, you know, people were happy to stay and enjoy that time, the ambience of Saskatoon,” said Peggy Sarjeant, the president of the Saskatoon Historical Society.
Sarjeant says it’s a sad day to see the building go and what’s left of the space is a big question mark.
She says Bobyn was interested in the history of the building and how papers were found that linked to the history of Chinese immigrants in Saskatoon. She says Second Avenue and 19th Street was the focus area of Chinese immigrants when they came to the city.
“Somebody had tried hard to save the building and was unable to do it. And that is sad from the Heritage Society’s point of view because we need people who are willing to look at reusing repurposing buildings,” Sarjeant said.
Raymer says she went through the building herself and says it was gutted and that there was nothing historical left about the building except the wood frame.
After the demolition is complete and fenced, the fire department says the owner will have the opportunity to move the debris and fill the hole that’s been left behind.