LETTER – KDN building could have been used for new police headquarters
KDN building during demolition in 2017. (Image: Mel Rothenburger file photo)l.
Dear Armchair Mayor,
I certainly don’t know a lot of the history of the building which used to house your local newspaper but I know enough to realize they made a big mistake not repurposing the building after it was bought by the City from Glacier.
Apparently, the building was built in 1956 and was built to last; solid as granite rock with solid floors and bricks in the wall structure. Was the price tag about $4.3 million or thereabouts? I thought at the time, as did a lot of people, that was an expensive parking lot.
Nowadays you’d be hard pressed to find a building like that. I watch “This Old House” where ‘vintage’ homes are brought to modern standards. Why could that not have been done with the KDN office building? Keeping the existing RCMP building downtown, doing some upgrading inside of it and upgrading the former KDN building could have been a possible solution to building an entirely new RCMP headquarters building.
Has common sense gone out the window?
If nothing else, if that old printing press and some other things were indeed buried at the site, maybe a crane can lift it out and we can have a new community statue in front of City Hall.
JOHN NOAKES,
Citizen of Westmount
EDITOR’S NOTE: I believe the printing press was separated into units and sold. Also, there was a short-lived effort to use the building as the core of the PAC.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
I am trying to remember if Council put out to the public the idea of buying the News paper building before its’ purchase. I remember the incumbent Mayor coming extremely close to being unseated by another candidate from up the North Thompson because of the rejection of the Riverside Parkade plan in the referendum at the Civic Election. Without a newspaper things get a bit foggy…
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I think that was the year Peter Milobar was up against Dieter Dudy and Frank Stewart. Frank dropped out in support of Dieter, once he declared. Both of them wanted Peter out, but it was not to be.
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The existing RCMP building is only 35 years old–maybe it could be repurposed for a city hall? Seems a shame to demolish a building that’s still good and already paid for.
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