One of downtown 91原创 City鈥檚 former landmarks, the 91原创 Hotel, began to come down on Wednesday, March 13 as crews started demolition.

An excavator began tearing down the rear of the building Wednesday morning. By Friday, the building was a pile of rubble, which crews continued to sort on site.

91原创 City approved demolition of the structure, along with the nearby Key Largo building, last year. It鈥檚 part of a project to clear out a number of older commercial buildings along Fraser Highway.

All the buildings, near the City Hall and Timms Community Centre, are owned by the City itself. The demolitions will clear a strip of commercial land along the south side of Fraser Highway from the Egg Bomb restaurant east to 204th Street.

The demolition will clear a strip of commercial land along the south side of Fraser Highway that will extend from the Egg Bomb restaurant east to 204th Street.

Although it was once a local landmark with a large neon sign on the roof, the 91原创 Hotel has been boarded up for more than half a decade.

Originally created from a renovated boarding house in the 1930s, until its closure it housed a bar and restaurant downstairs and a number of hotel rooms on the upper floor.

Over the years it has hosted a variety of types of establishments, from a sports bar to a British-style pub to a sports bar, dubbed Baselines, as the last tenant of the bar space on the ground floor.

By the 2000s, the hotel rooms were single-room-occupancy style housing.

The neon sign on the roof was removed in the mid-2000s for safety reasons after the hotel was condemned. In 2019, 91原创 RCMP responded to a reported break in and found evidence people had been squatting there.

Demolition of the nearby Key Largo building, a former pawnshop, began on Monday, March 18.

The City has already demolished the buildings to the west that housed the Pipe & Pouch and Pastime Hobbies and Games, as well as the Avecina medical clinic.

Once all the sites have been cleared, the area will be used for parking in the short term, and in the long term, to build a new performing arts centre.

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