A new skin is going onto the building at the southwest corner of Second Avenue and Victoria Street. The high-profile project has been in the public eye for the past two weeks as demolition crews cordoned off parts of the busy intersection. It will be another two weeks as the decades-old place gets its new look.
The property owners insist the month-long upgrade will be well worth it for the public aesthetic, and now was the right time.
"We've been thinking about this for a long time, but we wanted to do our part to make it look as good as new before the Canada Winter Games started," said co-owner Peter Campbell Sr. His son Peter Campbell Jr. is a stakeholder in the renovation, as owner of the gym inside, the primary tenant of the complex. The other co-owner is Peter Wise.
The renovation project is also one of those getting a Downtown Prince George facade improvement grant, another program that got a boost due to the Canada Winter Games.
"We made the investment to buy the building six years ago. The economic downturn was on, the market was down, but we knew in Prince George the values would come back up, so it was an opportunity to be downtown owners we couldn't pass up," said Campbell, who is also the owner of Hart U-Stor. "We think that location has a lot of potential as prime office space. It needed a facelift, so that's what's happening now. We stripped it down and now we're putting it back together."
The 32,000-square-foot building was originally built about 30 years ago, and was originally a furniture store owned by Ron Newsons. It has also been home, over the years, to a bank, a community college, a newspaper, the Prince George and District Teachers' Association and law offices.
