It’s been just over a year since YYC’s Budget Rental Car moved out of the Historic Firehall No. 1 after occupying the space for 30 long years. Now, the city is looking into exactly how much work it’ll take to restore the 6th Avenue building in hopes of grabbing the attention of a new tenant.

As you can imagine, as one of the city’s oldest buildings the unoccupied Firehall is looking pretty sinister.

This is actually not the longest the building has been left vacant, though. Before Budget moved in, the sandstone building was left empty between 1973 and 1989.

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Surprisingly it was still in pretty good shape when the rental company set up shop. In fact, they pretty much left it as is.

The city has said that they have had a few people come to them interested. One Calgarian who has been eyeing the space was Garry Saunders, president of the Firefighters Museum Society.

He actually said he would like to turn it into a gallery. Unfortunately, this particular space is pricey, and the pandemic has made it difficult to generate any revenue, so making a rent payment would be tough.

The city is still looking for a good fit, both short-term and long-term, so it’ll be pretty interesting to see what to fill the Firehall No. 1 space with. We’ll be watching and waiting, but we won’t hold our breath. COVID really put a fork in any near future money moves, didn’t it?

Curiocity Staff

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