Building powerhouses look for new life at old RAM
Despite the province's ongoing work to demolish the former Royal Alberta Museum in Glenora, the heads of Beljan Development and Reimagine are campaigning to save it from the wrecking ball.
Their big idea is to repurpose rather than demolish it — and stop letting the existence of asbestos in the building derail a discussion of saving it.
"Leasing the building to a known, competent, and capable development and design team is a lot less risky than taking on a demolition project where there's all sorts of things that could surprise you," Vivian Manasc, founding principal architect at Reimagine and a member of the Alberta Order of Excellence, told Taproot.
Reimagine and Beljan Development both have experience rejuvenating historic buildings. They held an event that Taproot attended on Nov. 21 to discuss their pitch — which they have shared with the Alberta government — to preserve the nearly 200,000-square-foot building, upgrade its infrastructure, and prime it for new purposes like retail, food service, recreation spaces, and cultural facilities. But the team isn't locking itself into just one course.
"The art of of repurposing an asset is just understanding how you create that flexibility, how you create all the pieces that tenants or different uses will require," Ivan Beljan, the owner of Beljan Development, told Taproot. "I think you just have to understand what the market is looking for today, but also be adaptive enough that you can accept other things that you may not have even envisioned there."
Opened in 1967 as the Provincial Museum of Alberta, the original RAM was funded by the federal and Alberta governments to commemorate Canada's centennial. Its six-year construction cost $8.5 million, or between $75 million and $88 million in today's money. The building was renamed during Queen Elizabeth II's visit in 2005, her last trip to Alberta. It was shuttered 10 years later. The new Royal Alberta Museum opened downtown in 2018 and cost nearly $376 million. Architectural fans love the former RAM for its Tyndall limestone exteriors, marble-lined interior, and the reproductions of Indigenous petroglyphs from Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park, which are carved into its south-facing walls.
"You couldn't possibly build that building now," June Acorn, a nearby resident and advocate for saving the building, told CBC in 2016, when demolition was first discussed.
Asbestos has been raised as a challenge to save the old RAM, but it's not a barrier for Beljan and Manasc. "That's actually the least of our worries," Manasc said. "It's just the thing that you have to do, just like washing the floors. Nobody talks about washing the floors."
In fact, the province has started asbestos abatement work at the former RAM and is also removing artworks from the premises as it pursues its demolition options, Manasc said. But if that makes it sound like the wrecking ball is already swinging, Manasc said that's not the case.
"The earliest a demolition would actually begin would be May," she said, estimating this based on keeping watch on the process. Manasc noted the due date for consultant WSJ to prepare tendering documents (invitations for bids by contractors) is at the end of February, and there is a two-month average between a tender and work.
