The smoke may be long gone, but its historical fire lingers.
Eau Claire’s 25-metre red brick smoke stack, which “harkens back to the community’s beginnings” will take another step towards being formally canonized as a municipal historic resource by the city’s land use, planning and transportation committee Wednesday, said Ald. Druh Farrell, adding it’s more of a formality than anything else now after the city guaranteed its protection when it sold the land.
“This isn’t just any old smoke stack,” Farrell said. “It’s a piece of our history and we don’t have many smoke stacks in Calgary anymore, this might be it and it’s certainly worth saving.”
The mixed-use development, which will take over Eau Claire Market where the smoke stack still presides, is planned to use the southwest corner stack as a focal point to “help tell the story of our origins,” Farrell said.
The smoke stack was once part of the heating system for a bus barn, an element of the city’s thriving industrial sector.
