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Monday 24 October 2011

Demolitions are such a waste

Starland Theatre Demolition

It surprises and disappoints me what gets demolished along with buildings. Whether it be numerous suites of office furniture or row upon row of shelving, I always think that someone could have made better use of it.


Grain Exchange Curling Club

Case in point with the Grain Exchange Curling Club. I noticed that the upstairs restaurant / lounge was still set up as the building was coming down. The place just closed earlier this year so I assume that a majority of the items were in good working order.

I have a hunch that a free ad on kijiji, or a similar service, offering free tables and chairs to hold 100 or so would have been of interest to some church hall, rec centre or even a used furniture place. Heck, leave them at the curb and someone will take them away !

Former Orpheum Billiards

Considering the amount of effort that goes into carefully picking out and sorting debris into recyclable metals, reusable bricks etc., it's too bad that owners and demolishers don't put a little more effort into salvaging things at the front end.

4 comments:

Dalila said...

I totally agree with you on this. Couldn't items be offered for sale on the internet site to offset paying people to remove things? There are probably some folks without employment who wouldn't mind doing this. But it seems that the extra effort required to do this isn't worth it to the owners/demolishers. Pretty sad.

Anonymous said...

I've never even heard of The Grain Exchange Curling Club (I don't curl). But I totally would've salvaged that stuff & put it to good use.

RM said...

Unfortunately in todays world, the costs associated with salvage are often greater than the sale price that can be realized, and the ever present "law suit" means others can't go in to salvage stuff. If they're hurt, they'll sue you, and you can't get "insurance" for non workers on a site. It's a vicious circle.

Christian Cassidy said...

@ RM I agree that's a sad fact in today's world.

In this case, and what led me to post about it, was that the building was purchased in the Spring and had a clear out already when the club went to join the Granite. The new owners sat all summer long before turning it over to the demo crews.