City of Calgary and CSPACE Collaborate on New Arts Centre

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The City of Calgary's historic Fire Hall No. 1 (photo courtesy of cSpace)

The City of Calgary and cSPACE, a Calgary-based arts incubator, are collaborating to transform the city’s historic Fire Hall No. 1 and the North-West Travellers building into a multi-purpose arts and culture space.

“These buildings are iconic. They’re some of our oldest buildings that represent our history, but it’s also an opportunity to look at where we want to go forward,” says Ryan Meier, manager of facility planning for the city.

“We see some great investments happening in the downtown core and bringing more arts and culture into our city at an accessible level.”

In November 2023, the City of Calgary invited applications to encourage collaboration with arts and culture organizations. After some consideration, cSPACE was selected to lead the project.

The project is in its early stages, and the cSPACE team plans to complete recommendations for the city this year.

“It's an incredibly exciting project,” says cSPACE CEO Deeter Schurig.

“It’s both looking to the past and preserving part of our heritage in two significant buildings, but also looking towards what the buildings need to be utilized better and what they need to serve the community in the future.”

The province of Alberta recognizes the two buildings as Provincial Historic Resources on the Alberta Register of Historic Places. Fire Hall No. 1, located at Sixth Avenue S.W., is a two-storey concrete and masonry building built in 1911. Its red brick walls, five bay doors, and bell tower manifested the development of firefighting characteristics during pre-war Alberta.

The North-West Travellers building stands four storeys high on First Street S.E. and features an Edwardian classical style of architecture with straight rooflines and multiple windows. It was built before the Second World War to house Alberta-based members of the Northwest Commercial Travellers Association of Canada, an organization of people who would travel from town to town, showing samples for retailers to potentially order.

According to Meier, the city team recognizes the importance of preserving the buildings' character-defining details and their historical significance.

“Historical buildings are complex. They’re different from how we build things today,” says Meier. 

“We’re trying to preserve key elements like the brick facades, the hose tower, and the front doors of the fire station. You must be really thoughtful of how you design and intervene with existing buildings, both from a structural standpoint and any changes to the building overall.”

As the City of Calgary and cSPACE move ahead with a design and feasibility study, cSPACE is also conducting a community survey for Calgarians to share their perspectives on these buildings and gather suggestions for the hub.

As of now, Meier says that the project is in its early days.  

“We’re working with cSPACE to understand their vision. Then we move on to the next stages: how the design would work and how funding would come together in a project like this,” says Meier. 

It isn’t the first heritage project that cSPACE has been involved with in Calgary. In 2012, cSPACE bought and transformed the old sandstone King Edward School in Calgary’s Marda Loop community into a creative hub and co-working space for retail businesses and galleries. ■

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