An abandoned heritage building in Calgary’s Ogden neighbourhood will be boarded up again after a fire on Wednesday morning.
The fire broke out around 3:50 a.m., at the 110-year-old Ogden Block at 72nd Avenue and Ogden Road Southeast.
The building has been vacant, with no power or gas hookups, but the Calgary Fire Department said a couple of people got inside the building and started a fire to keep warm.
One person left the building and another was removed by fire crews, the CFD said. The person was assessed by EMS and taken to hospital for smoke inhalation, according to the fire department.
A fire investigator was at the scene Wednesday morning. The CFD said it appears the fire was not set to cause harm, but to stay warm.
Fire damage was not overly apparent from the outside of the building.
The building is abandoned and is set to be demolished to make way for Green Line LRT expansion construction.
A local community group has been trying to save the more than century old building. The Millican Ogden Heritage Group wants the building to be a cornerstone of revitalization for the community.
Bonny Warbeck of the Millican Ogden Heritage Group came to see the damage done at the building on Wednesday morning.
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“The damage mostly seems contained to the upper floor at the back of the hallway, so thank goodness it didn’t spread any farther,” Warbeck said. “There is water damage inside, but it seems minimal.
“It’s really upsetting. It’s shocking, and yet in a way it’s not shocking because this building has been sitting here.”
The city purchased the site in 2021, and the building was scheduled to be torn down to serve as a staging area for construction crews on the Green Line LRT project, which is slated to run behind the Ogden Block.
The Millican Ogden Heritage Group has been pushing to keep the building as part of a future plaza in the area. The building has been standing for two and half years longer than it was supposed to be.
Warbeck said a fire like this has “always been a fear.”
“People have been breaking into it quite often. … It’s always been a possibility,” she said. “Just the fact it is sitting here vacant isn’t good. It needs more protection or shouldn’t have gotten to this point.
“The more the city could do in the meantime, the better, because we don’t have much heritage left in this neighbourhood. This is our last commercial heritage building.”
Ward 9 Coun. Gian-Carlo Carra said the city made a mistake to not recognize the Ogden Block as a heritage building when it was purchased. He told reporters Wednesday that the fire was caused by unhoused people who were trying to keep warm, and the damage was “minimal.”
However, he added the city allowed the building “to fall into a state of rack and ruin.” Carra previously attended a rally to save the Ogden heritage building from demolition for the Green Line LRT, and he told reporters on Wednesday the city can find the money to recognize the building as a heritage site.
“We have to find some way forward for that building because it is obviously a target for shelter for unhoused people,”
Carra added the fire makes it harder to restore the heritage building but it’s not “unsurvivable.”
“The building’s in rough shape and it is suffering from a demolition-from-neglect kind of situation, but this is not an Enoch House sort of fire event that just wipes the heritage asset off the table,” he said.
The Ogden Block was built in 1913.
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