Despite a recent stop order issued by the Town of Irricana, the Irricana Hotel restoration project saw a great deal of community support at an input meeting hosted by the restoration project leaders in Irricana on March 23.
Kerry Tucker, a Calgary resident and businessman who purchased the dilapidated historic hotel in 2022, presented an update on the hotel's restoration to assembled community members at the K.I.K. Senior's Centre. Kerry announced that the project was moving ahead at a steady pace and that great efforts have been made to clear out a lot of the junk that sat in the hotel's basement and main floors for years.
Tucker said that, so far, he and his team have removed 46 full 20-yard garbage bins from the property, or about $18,000 worth.
"[I knew] if I wanted to represent this town, I want to clean it up [first]," said Tucker, who said the goal of the hotel restoration is to preserve a piece of Canadian and provincial history.
According to Tucker, his vision is to build a coffee shop in the back with a bar or public house in the front as phase one. Phase two would include the second floor with studio spaces and a space to showcase the history of the hotel and finally, phase three would see the development of a third floor with residential spaces
So far, the hotel's roof, which had fallen into complete disrepair, has been renovated and the hotel's back wall and exterior yards have been cleaned up and fixed. Tucker mentioned that, as part of the restoration, a room will be constructed on the hotel's second floor that will serve as a small museum that will allow hotel guests to see what life looked like at the turn of the century.
Tucker said that a motivator for him to complete the project is the desire to generate positive publicity for Irricana and, of course, to make money.
"We're a bedroom community to Airdrie," Tucker said to the room. "The more publicity...the more money."
After a brief presentation on the state of the restoration project, residents were given a chance to ask questions or make comments. One resident, a woman who had lived in Irricana in the 1990s, reminisced about the fun times she and her friends had at the hotel back when it was operational.
"The thing I most liked [about the hotel] is I got to meet people I never would have got to meet otherwise," she said. "Something had to happen, it would have been sad to see it go."
Many residents in attendance shared the same sort of sentiment. As Tucker mentioned the progress that had been made in the restoration, men and women in the crowd clapped in approval.
Tucker stated that there was still a lot more work to be done on the hotel before he could even be granted a building permit from the Town. The work to restore the historic hotel has been challenging, he said, but he added that "the more positivity I can bring [to Irricana] the better."
