Downtown fire displaces Regina Farmers’ Market

It was a sad sight for Holly Laird when she came across the aftermath of a burned-out downtown heritage building Tuesday morning.

“These buildings have been a backdrop to the Regina Farmers’ Market for a lot of years, so to see it in ruins is really sad, honestly,” Laird, the market’s executive director, told reporters on Tuesday.

The fire at the building on 12th Avenue started early Sunday. The City of Regina revealed Tuesday afternoon that the 111-year-old building will be torn down.

Laird said the farmers’ market won’t be able to use the area for the remainder of its outdoor season.

She said the market will be relocated to two different areas: On the 2000 block of Scarth Street for the next two Wednesdays and at REAL District for the next two Saturdays.

“We’d like to stay downtown as that’s where lots of our customers come to find us,” Laird said.

Even amid construction in the downtown, Laird said the market hopes to be back at Pat Fiacco Plaza by next May.

However, Laird said that without the heritage building there, the landscape will be different.

“It’ll change the look and feel of the market. We really love being surrounded by these heritage buildings in this beautiful location, so it will definitely feel a little empty,” she said.

Laird wasn’t the only one dismayed by the damage to the old building.

“(I’m) very disappointed; I just don’t even have words,” said Jackie Schmidt, the president of Heritage Regina.

Schmidt expressed frustration over demolition requests from Harvard Developments for the heritage site.

“There are things that the city can do going forward to make sure that property owners understand that when they have a heritage building, that they need to protect them and (the property owners) need to do maintenance and if they don’t, those repairs can be performed by the city at the expense of the developer,” Schmidt said.

“If the developer then still refuses, the city can lien the property, so I’m hoping that’s what happens next.”

On Tuesday, Autumn Dawson — the city’s director of planning and development services — confirmed to reporters that her team did a receive a request in May of 2022.

“We worked collaboratively with the property owner and we got an assessment done on the property,” Dawson said. “Through that assessment, it was determined that we could work towards maintenance of the building and so collaboratively, we worked with the property owner throughout the year and the demolition permit was cancelled earlier this year and we are working towards maintenance.”

Dawson said she believed the property owner cancelled the order, but said she didn’t have the details.

980 CJME reached out to Harvard Developments for comment, but the company hadn’t replied by the time of publication.

— With files from 980 CJME’s Lisa Schick