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3 months later: what’s happening with evacuated Kensington Manor?

Emergency crews on the scene of a building evacuation in Kensington on Nov. 23, 2017. Jill Croteau / Global News

Three months after tenants were forced to flee their Kensington Manor apartments, there are still a lot of unanswered questions.

One of the biggest: what will happen to the building?

The city issued an evacuation order to all 125 residents on Nov. 23, saying the building was unsafe to live in.

READ MORE: ‘Possible imminent building collapse’ forces evacuation of 8-storey Kensington complex

Tenants were allowed back in two weeks later to gather their belongings and after the final move-out, engineers conducted an in-depth investigation into the state of the building and its structural issues.

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“Given the engineering reports we’ve looked at, [Kensington Manor is] unstable at this time, that’s why it’s shored the way it is,” Wayne Brown with the City of Calgary’s safety response unit said.

“It really has to do with the floor slabs, that’s all the detail I can give you.”

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What still isn’t clear is what caused the problems in the first place.

“We really don’t have that,” Brown said. “There’s an investigation ongoing in regards to that.”

READ MORE: Kensington Manor landlord calls building collapse notice ‘an absolute lie’

As for the fate of Kensington Manor – though nothing is official – it seems pretty likely the building will be torn down.

The owner has been passed on all the must-fixes in order to make the building safe to live in and the city says that list is a very costly one.

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The other option is for the owner to tear the building down and potentially even rebuild.

However, just because there is a multi-unit apartment complex built on the site now, it doesn’t mean another one can just go up.

“The role for the city is to support [the owner’s] decision-making,” Brown said. “It’s going to be demo permits, building permits and if it’s not moving along as quickly as we would like to see, [they could  potentially] issue a safety acts code order to firm up the timelines.”

Global News reached out to the owner to see what his plans are, but he hasn’t responded.

If a decision isn’t made in what the city considers a “timely manner,” it can set a deadline for the owner to make up his mind.

The city says staff have been speaking with him since the evacuation three months ago and after recent meetings, believe he will be making a decision about whether to fix the building or tear it down in the next few weeks.

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The building was also home to athletics store The Running Room. Running Room staff tell Global News that all employees have been transferred to other locations and no one has been laid off.

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