Brandon Heritage Win #2

The scorecard for Brandon heritage preservation in the past month seems to be Heritage Preservation 3, Surface Parking Lots 2.

At the time of my last post there was good news about a new heritage website and a plan to save the former CP Depot. The bad news was the collapse of the Brown Building.

Since then some good and bad news.

Apparently the Strand Theatre may be in structural trouble due to the fact that it shared a wall will the now dust Brown Block. The Strand, Brandon's first talking picture house, sat vacant since about 2007 when Landmark Cinemas abandoned it in favour of their suburban location.

In 2009 Renaissance Brandon kicked in seed money to see if the Brandon Folk Music and Art Festival Society could save it. You can read more about that here. (Anyone have an update on how that went / is going ?)

Image: manitobaphotos.com (for gallery)

On a happier note, there has since been good news for probably one of the neatest heritage building in the province. The ca. 1913 Brandon Dome Building, formally the Dominion Exhibition Display Building Number II. It sits in the parking lot of the Keystone Centre and is used as storage. It was in play briefly a few years back when former Mayor Burgess thought it would make a good home to a Curling Hall of Fame but when a Hall of Fame wasn't coming resurrecting the deteriorating fell off the political radar.

Provincial Exhibition of Manitoba kicked off a $2m fund raising drive called Restore the Glory to renovate it into offices and display space.

Last week the province kicked in $450,000 and yesterday it was announced that ATCO is kicking in $100,000.