A report by one of Canada’s leading heritage consultants says a beleaguered yacht club building in Cape Breton can and should be saved from the wrecking ball, reports The Chronicle Herald.
Enterprise Cape Breton Corp. bought the Royal Cape Breton Yacht Club headquarters earlier this year for $280,000 and initially said it would be demolished. An earlier engineering report indicated the building, erected in 1900, needed more than $2.5 million in repairs.
But a new report by architect and heritage consultant Christopher Borgal, published on March 30 and released publicly Friday, says the building can be preserved with an immediate outlay of between $210,000 and $345,000.
The report, written for the Sydney Architectural Conservation Society and the Heritage Canada Foundation, says the earlier $2.5-million estimate was based on new building construction rates that would return the structure to a brand-new state. But, since most of the building is already usable and sound, a lesser investment could preserve it in the short term, with other projects scheduled in the future.
