Cape Breton residents, councillors fed up with abandoned buildings

Cape Breton councillors and residents are calling for the removal of abandoned buildings.

Gordon MacDonald is sick of looking at the abandoned post office where he used to work in North Sydney, N.S.

“It’s been vacant now for 13 years, so we’ve been talking about it that long,” he said.

Roughly 1,000 people agree with him. That’s how many signatures are on a petition to demolish the building on Archibald Avenue that has been broken into – and set on fire – over the years.

“There’s asbestos in that place,” MacDonald said. “It’s a safety hazard to the nth degree. The graffiti on it, there’s people inside it who are pushing glass out through window. You see the windows up there, they are smashed out towards the road.”

“Petitions in itself, you know, that’s something that proves that there’s record of people with concern but at the end of the day it comes down to budget”, said Cape Breton Regional Municipality (CBRM) councillor Eldon MacDonald.

Eldon MacDonald wants any demolition to include a long-abandoned former newspaper building on a busy street close to the main drag and the city’s cruise terminal.

“This building on Dorchester Street is an eyesore,” he said. “It’s been empty for approximately 30 years. Something needs to be done with it and if the developers aren’t going to sell it, then they need to have something done to remove the building.”

For years, CBRM has been saying it would need financial help from other levels of government to deal with hundreds of abandoned buildings.

Both councillors agree getting rid of the problem structures is easier said than done as demolition costs are estimated in the millions of dollars and the work has to be done safely.

However, they feel that solutions for the former North Sydney post office and former Cape Breton Post building on Dorchester Street are long overdue.

“We need to have serious discussions – either move forward with developing it, or we need to find a way to even take these properties from these individuals if they can’t afford to demolish them,” Eldon MacDonald said.

“I would hope we are not talking about these buildings years from now,” Gordon MacDonald added.

Eldon MacDonald said he expects talks about tearing these buildings down will come up again during the next CBRM budget discussions.

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