City considers Eamon’s garage options
It could wind up as a diner or a park welcoming centre or something else, but the Eamon’s garage will remain a vacant heritage building in a storage site for up to six more months while the city considers its latest options.
Some members on council are ready to end cut short the saga of the vintage service station, but Mayor Naheed Nenshi is among those keen to preserve it.
As the city checks the viability of a heritage society’s bid to refashion the building into a not- for- profit diner at the Tuscany LRT parking lot — near where it originally stood — there’s new support for another option.
Richard and Lois Haskayne, leading Calgary philanthropists, wrote council this weekend in support of the idea to locate the garage at the new northwest city park that will bear their name.
It would be fitting because Dick Haskayne was an oilpatch executive, and the service station would retain a place of pride at the city’s northwest edge.
“My goal is to make sure that building is used and loved,” Nenshi said.
It’s unclear how much the city will wind up spending to preserve the building, after restoring the Eamon’s sign as part of the Tuscany LRT project. The mayor dismissed as silly the idea of turning Eamon’s station into a two- unit affordable housing project in the middle of a park- and- ride.
Calgary has spent $ 230,000 so far on safely moving or storing the half- century- old building. For three years, it was up for lease to a company who might want to restore and operate the facility at its original site, but had no takers until the Roy Eamon Cultural and Heritage Society made a pitch after a deadline, and requiring city subsidy.
The city will now be allowed to market the building for sale to private interests, if there’s no civic use for the building.