A city-owned West End landmark is in danger of becoming a vacant, dilapidated shell, as the busy gymnastics centre that currently inhabits Snowdown Theatre has been moved out, as the city has declared the crumbling building dangerous.The Snowdon Theatre, an art-deco treasure complete with stunning bas relief on its walls and ceiling, has been property of the city since about 1999.
There are issues with the roof, which has in turn, led to fears that the ceiling could collapse.
The city has repeatedly said that it has insufficient money to maintain and repair the building and had vowed to sell it in January. Public backlash put that decision to sell on hold but apparently nothing was done meanwhile to shore up the property.
In 1995 a pair of entrepreneurs invested $2.5 million into repurposing the 25,000 square foot theatre for commercial purposes but they must have gone broke, as the city took it over.
In recent years the building has been used exclusively by the gym, as the other potential rental areas have gone unrented. I was told that the city had intentionally left them empty because they aimed at selling the building, but if that's the case the revenues that the city missed out on could have gone far in terms of maintaining the structure.
In January, a borough representative told me that the borough didn't consider the property as something suitable for municipality to own and yet the gymnastics centre is a busy hive with something like 400 young local athletes using on a regular basis, so it has a legitimate community vocation.In the meantime the kids who train at the gymnastics centre (including one of my daughters) have been forced to train in borrowed gyms in other neighbourhoods, which has caused much hardship and reduced hours.
Whether the required repairs will actually be made remains unclear. Without the repairs, the building could become another Seville Theatre, a great location which was permitted to fall apart and remained boarded-up, an eyesore of shame for a generation.
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It's a sad situation, as there always seems to be plenty of cash for other sports. Hockey (largely a boys' sport) is heavily subsidized and the borough even installed an entirely unnecessary $130,000 basketball facility in the middle of a green space in Oxford Park, so it's hard to believe that no level of government has the money to fix this architectural treasure and save the dream of the young gymnasts in the meanwhile.
I'd like to see the city fix the roof, rent out the properties downstairs and permanently dedicate the upper space to the gymnastics school. To encourage this, they should undertake to cover an adjacent section of the Decarie Expressway and add green space and parking spots so as to make the area flourish as well.