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Originally Posted by Drybrain
The irony, I assume, is that they could never afford to restore it?
My two cents on Khyber is that city should just fix it. The costs are unfortunate, but it's an extraordinary building (Keith's opinion notwithstanding) and I just don't see a proper restoration, at the $3-4 million cost estimate, being tenable for a private developer, unless they commit some substantial alteration/build above it/etc. (Maybe I'm wrong, but that's my hunch.)
It'd be wildly unacceptable to commit substantial alterations to the building in the name of making a redevelopment/re-use more financially feasible. It just needs to be fixed, as-is. It needs cash money. Christ, I keep coming back to the Lister Block in Hamilton--the city spent $21 million on that, and that's a city in a less enviable financial position than we are. The Khyber needs to be fixed, by the city, now. Selling it so some private developer can snap it up and then sit on the land until the building falls down is no solution.
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I think it is a hideous, unwelcoming, almost hostile-looking building and despite its age and whatever architectural merit some may think it has, it is a real drain on that block. But let me put that aside for a second and be magnanimous. I am not a professional architecture critic and maybe it is one of the best buildings of its kind in the world. Then OK, perhaps the city through an unfortunate series of bad decisions is on the hook to restore it. Fine, can't change the past.
But I have a huge problem with them doing that just so it can be a private clubhouse for the Khyber Arts Society. Never have I seen a more entitled-sounding bunch. If the city is going to sink that kind of money into the dump, then there needs to be some return. Gifting it to the KAS is not that. It needs to be made a home for wayward girls, a municipal office, something that the city can get some proper value out of. Not the KAS clubhouse. No way.