Looking at the patchy exterior of the Irricana Hotel, you might think the old building has seen better days, but Kerry Tucker will tell you it has actually come a long way in the last two years.
Tucker, who is from Calgary, bought the hotel, which was built around 1905, in 2020 for $89,000.
“It was on the news and they said you could buy a piece of history for under $90,000, so my wife and I drove out and we took a look at it, and said, well you know what, maybe there’s a challenge, maybe not,” Tucker said.
On the drive back to Calgary, Tucker said his wife turned to him in the car and said, “I dare you.”
He took the dare, and has been clearing out garbage and stabilizing the structure ever since.
“There was so much garbage in here, I spent a month just removing garbage out of this area,” Tucker said.
“It was packed up to the ceiling … every floor. The basement was packed tight and the whole yard was just littered … Cars, boats, everything.”
He estimates he’s spent about $270,000 on the renovations to date and says his goal is to restore it back to the way it looked in the early 1900s.
On Saturday, Tucker held a public meeting just up the road from the old hotel, which is located about 50 kilometres northeast of Calgary, to fill residents in on the progress and the challenges he’s faced so far with his ambitious restoration project.
One of those challenges was a stop-work order placed on the site by the town due to a lack of proper construction fencing. Tucker said he’s addressed that problem, but issues remain, including the removal of a power pole outside the property and whether he’ll be required to bury his power lines.
Leah Uffelman was born near Irricana in 1936 and now lives in nearby Beiseker. She attended Saturday’s meeting and said that, while she didn’t frequent the hotel as an adult, she remembers her mother’s warnings about it as a child.
“We were always raised not to speak to strangers in the way, so the strangers might be there. So come straight home and we were in trouble if we did not come straight home!” she said.
Uffelman says she is surprised Tucker is taking on such an expensive effort, but thinks it’s a good thing for the town.
“I certainly wish them luck and hope people will step up to the plate and give them a hand in any way they can,” said Uffelman.
Tucker is hoping to complete renovations on hotel’s first floor within the year, reopening with a bar and café on the main level.
“The only thing that’ll stop me is either my health, or there’s so many roadblocks thrown up … that it’s not worth investing any more.”
WATCH | Calgary man plans to restore historic hotel:
A Calgary man has been working on an formidable restoration project on an historic landmark left untouched for the past two decades.
