Annex portion of Summerside's historic City Hall to be demolished

With a portion of Summerside's historic City Hall slated to be torn down, at least one member of council thinks there should have been more public consultation about its demolition.

The building's annex, which juts out from the main structure next to the main entrance, has fallen into disrepair. 

It had been used by various city departments, then as office space and storage in recent years, until an engineer's assessment found the brick work had become unsafe. 

Summerside's deputy chief administrative officer, J.P. Desrosiers, said it was determined that no amount of repair work could save the structure. 

"Considerations obviously are public safety. We need to make sure that any building that's municipally owned and operated needs to be up to a public safety standard," Desrosiers said.

"We unfortunately deemed that that portion of the City Hall annex facility wasn't safe and needed to be demolished." 

The annex was built along with the original brick and sandstone structure in the mid-1880s. The building was a postal and customs services building before it eventually became the seat of Summerside's municipal government.

City Hall is a national historic site and a designated heritage property. Under the city's own rules, heritage properties can be demolished only if they're beyond repair. 

Council voted unanimously this week to have the annex demolished, but still needs to decide when that work will take place. The city has already hired a contractor, at a cost of nearly $500,000. 

A decision on what, if anything, will replace the annex will likely fall to Summerside's heritage committee — once the city appoints one. 

Coun. Norma McColeman sat on a previous iteration of council's heritage committee, and thinks residents should've had a say in what happened to the annex. 

"I know there's many people in this area that have heritage homes … who really follow things very closely. I would have liked to see a bit of a public discussion with our residents so that they felt that they were a part of the discussion, but in our situation where it was a real safety concern, a decision had to be made," she said. 

"I think it would be very important that as soon as our board can be appointed … they could make some recommendations of things that would be appropriate for that space, because it is an old landmark space." 

Regardless of whether a heritage review of the annex was done, Desrosiers said it wouldn't have changed the fact that the structure needed to be demolished due to its current state.