New concerns arise about St. Paul’s building

Another hurdle has been put in the path of St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church in Prince Albert.

Norman Hill, clerk of session, met with the City of Prince Albert on Tuesday night.  He said according to an engineering report they were given on the building, the walls might be compromised now as well.

“They’re concerned about the walls possibly moving outward, so they have concerns that maybe some remedial action has to be taken to prevent them from moving,” he said.

The City told Hill they should probably come up with a plan for how to deal with this by July 1.

“We’re still working with a client who is potentially going to buy it; it’s a congregation in town. We’re looking at working with the United Church on a proposal maybe for a developer to look at buying and developing it into something,” he said.

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“The worst case scenario would be that if nothing happens and if the church does have movement in the walls, we can’t leave it like that we’d have to take it down.”

Hill said they don’t know how much it would cost to repair the walls.

“Because we’re not sure whether we’d use cable across the sanctuary or using rods … we haven’t talked to a contractor about that, so we don’t know what it would cost,” he said.

If demolition does happen it would be fairly extensive, according to Hill, but rebuilding would cost more.

“The buyer is looking at bringing in their own engineer to do their own measurements using lasers.  They’ve already measured the inside of the building and it seems to be stable and so they’re going to be next looking at the outside of the building which is what our engineers were looking at to see what’s happening there,” he said.

The congregation had to leave the building near the end of 2013 when the roof was deemed unsafe.  By March 2014, the repair cost was pegged at more than $1.5 million. Since then, the congregation decided to walk away from the building, but they hoped to sell it to another congregation.  In January, the asking price listed for the century-old building on paNOW classifieds was $1.

sstone@panow.com

On Twitter: @sarahstone84