A sad moment has arrived for yours truly.
This is surely my final piece for the paper about the late and lamented Pigeon Hotel, at the corner of 11th Avenue and 102nd Street, which was finally demolished last week.
Of course, this was not the real name of this property, which actually consisted of two buildings.
It’s had a wide range of owners and tenants over the years. The location has been home for a funeral home, a furniture store, CJNB radio, a bus station, a dental office, a dance studio and restaurants, among others.
But it was after the fire at the old Dynasty restaurant that the properties entered their final, most notorious phase as a symbol of urban blight.
I got to know about this building from frequent phone calls the newsroom would get from outraged local residents who complained about the mess made on the streets by the pigeon population in the building.
I decided to take a look at it one day and saw for myself the pigeons flying in and out of the windows and hanging out on the roof.
The pigeons were having a blast, and we filled the paper with pictures of them. Hence, the “Pigeon Hotel.”
I know referring to this place as the Pigeon Hotel is disrespectful to all the former legitimate owners and tenants of that property. But the reality is this was exactly what this place had become. It belonged to the pigeons, and they were having a far better time than the human population who always cleaned up after them.
What outraged people the most was that City Hall seemed to be doing absolutely nothing about this building, even though they owned it through tax enforcement. Meanwhile, the City was issuing cleanup and demolition orders to these other private properties. To the public this reeked of hypocrisy.
The reality was City Hall did want to do something, but the adjoining building was still privately-owned and there were legal roadblocks associated with that.
Personally, I thought the entire situation was a disgrace. These buildings were doing more damage to the city’s reputation than any crime statistics ever did.
I know a segment of North Battleford firmly believes the city’s image problems could all go away with more positive coverage. You bet, this city has image problems, but it didn’t start with the media – or social media.
It stemmed from what people were seeing with their own eyes right there on 11th Avenue and 102nd Street, and elsewhere in the city.
I experienced this myself when I came for my job interview at the News-Optimistin 2008. After it was over, I took a drive around to see what the place was about.
Of course, I made the mistake of driving down 11th Avenue, and saw this bombed-out old building with a sign on the front with an arrow pointing towards the long-departed “South Vietnam Restaurant.”
Honestly, I was appalled.
Others visiting this city at the time didn’t just notice decrepitude there. It was at the Marlborough Hotel, at that vacant gas station on 100th Street, at vacant buildings on 100th and 101st Street, and on and on. Even the airport was falling apart.
But the “Pigeon Hotel” was the worst.
It was a living, asbestos-breathing symbol of an attitude of “letting things go” that had gripped the city for too long – one of neglect and disrespect towards properties all over North Battleford.
Looking back, this had to be a prime contributor to the “broken window syndrome” that has afflicted this community.
This is the idea that if you don’t repair windows or fix problems in your neighbourhood while they are small, the issues will just escalate and encourage more vandalism, littering, petty crime, and so on.
Residents know North Battleford has been gripped by vandalism, graffiti, and crime problems – exactly the issues “broken window syndrome” leads to. I firmly believe the “Pigeon Hotel” was a prime contributor to all of that.
The good news is people throughout North Battleford realized long ago that things had to change.
Local residents and City Hall are all on the same page – they all are demanding better from residents and from themselves in making the city look more livable, with initiatives towards community gardens, towards helping vandalism victims clean up their properties and in the overall efforts to improve the downtown area.
Slowly but surely, downtown is on the way back, and decrepit buildings have either been renovated or removed.
Today, the Pigeon Hotel is gone.
The sad thing is the situation should never have been allowed to get to this point. The final fate of these buildings on 11th Avenue and 102nd Street is nothing short of a tragedy.
This was a heritage site in the city of North Battleford with a rich and colorful history spanning a century.
But because it was allowed to fall into such disrepair in the first place, nothing could be done to save it – something three separate developers found out in recent years when they tried and failed to find any viable way to rehabilitate the buildings.
The fire at Jesus is Alive and the demolition of the Marlborough and now the 11th Avenue properties have been painful lessons for the city to learn about the need to preserve its heritage. City officials need to take a hard look at how it deals with heritage properties, so that other historic buildings won’t meet the same end.
My point is: don’t let this happen again. Do not allow the building that you work, or eat, or play, or conduct business in to suffer this fate.
Otherwise your building, too, could one day become known to the community as the “Pigeon Hotel.”
