St. Stephen council votes to demolish historic town hall

St. Stephen council voted unanimously in favour of tearing down its historic town hall, which has stood empty for seven years, in a meeting on Monday night.

The old town hall building is almost 130 years old, but it's been deemed a safety hazard and is too expensive to fix.

Town council met on Monday to discuss what to do with the building and voted 6-0 to begin the process of tearing down the historic building.

"If it did happen to deteriorate to the point where it wasn't stable anymore, it could possibly fall on the Royal Bank," said Mayor John Quartermain.

The building was designed by Thomas Fuller, the architect behind Parliament in Ottawa and the Halifax Armoury, and has stood since 1885. It served as the town's post office and town hall.

The building has now been empty for seven years.

"There's lots of structural issues on the outside," said Quartermain.

"The heating, the plumbing, the electrical, nothing is to code ... so it's deteriorated to a point with moisture and mould, and there's even a little bit of asbestos in the building, so in order to correct that and to bring it up to code, the estimates are currently $2 million."

Nothing is to code.- John Quartermain, St. Stephen mayor

An engineering report on the structure by Dillon Consulting put the cost of repairs at $1.6 million and $2 million.

The engineering reports also states "the entry of water and freezing could result in catastrophic failure of this gable end wall."

​Quartermain said a $2 million fix would be too much of a burden on local taxpayers.

The town looked for a developer to take over the building for two years, but no one came forward.

Town council will now put out a request for proposals to demolish the building.

The demolition is expects to cost the town $100,000.