14. Letter from Kirk Gable - Demolition of the Prince George Hotel

1941, when a new café was opened in the building. The proprietor, John Stott, renovated the
dining hall and began advertising the hotel as the city's premier location for private dining.
In addition to it's historical value, there are a number of other good reasons why this building
should not be demolished:
Carbon Footprint and Sustainability - Heritage conservation ensures that our
irreplaceable historic buildings will be enjoyed by future generations, and planning
for future generations is what sustainability is all about. There is ample evidence
that conservation of old buildings is a much "greener" course of action than
demolition and reconstruction. The National Trust for Heritage Preservation
estimates that demolition and reconstruction of buildings consumes more than three
times the energy required to retrofit an existing building and that it takes about 65
years for an energy efficient new building to save the amount of energy lost in
demolishing an existing building. They also estimate that building a new 15,240 sq.
meter commercial building requires the same amount of energy required to drive a
car 32,186 km per year for 730 years. In addition, conservation saves tons of debris
from the landfill making it the ultimate form of recycling.
• Economics - according to the UBC Office of Sustainability, their UBC Renew Program
has saved the taxpayers of BC approximately $88 million since 2004 by retrofitting ten
campus buildings rather than demolishing and rebuilding them. The buildings, dating
from 1923 - 1961 were completely refurbished to minimum Silver LEED standard (the
latest one, the Friedman Building achieved a Gold LEED designation) with an average
cost saving of 43% on each project. In addition to being much less expensive,
rehabilitation projects tend to be more labor intensive and create more local jobs than
new construction projects.
• Wood First - I can think of no better example for Prince George to demonstrate respect
for, and celebrate the long term sustainable value of wood structures, than to restore a
structurally sound, 100 year old commercial wood building. In fact the Prince George
Hotel was and is "Wood First". By demolishing it we cast doubt on our assertion that
commercial wood construction is a long term sustainable solution.
•
• Downtown - the shape and character of Downtown Prince George has been a passion of
mine for many years, and I'm concerned that one of the shortcomings of Downtown
Prince George is the lack of heritage buildings. It's not that there were none, it's just that
we seem to have little or no respect for old buildings, or perhaps the "common wisdom"
has been to cover old wooden buildings with aluminum siding or tear them down so we
can replace them with something shiny and modern. In the process we lose something
invaluable to a city core - a glimpse of history that tells the story of our beginnings. I
think our city's history is fascinating and the Prince George Hotel has been a significant
part of that history for almost 100 years. Whenever I travel, the first place I like to go is
to the "old city" which is always in the central core.
• Historic buildings and streets create a charming connection to the past that cannot be