Kelowna’s heritage priorities questioned after fire guts one of city’s oldest buildings

A fire that gutted one of Kelowna’s oldest buildings was deemed suspicious by RCMP on Thursday.

The fire department responded to a property at the bottom of Dilworth Drive around 3 a.m., Wednesday, after a passer-by reported a structure on fire.

That structure was the Fleming House, an old farm house built in 1871, which is part of the Girst Mill property.

The loss of the 149-year old building is being felt by many.

“It’s a huge loss,” said Bob Hayes, president of the Kelowna chapter of the Okanagan Historical Society. “It’s an absolutely devastating loss.”

This was the second time flames erupted at the old farmhouse.

In July of 2018, a suspicious fire damaged the farm house with squatters likely to blame.

“That should have been a wake-up call,” said Hayes.

While the city increased security patrols on site and boarded up the structure as well as the grist mill next to it and fenced the three heritage buildings on the property, Hayes said a lot more could have been done to protect the old structure.

He said that includes restoring the entire heritage site, similar to the Father Pandosy property, where a caretaker lives on site.

“In all the years that I have been involved, we have never had an incident of vandalism because we have a human presence there,” Hayes said.

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What’s frustrating, said Hayes, is that restoring the grist mill site has been on the city’s radar for years, but there’s been no action to move the plans forward.

“I think the city has been dragging its feet on this,” Hayes said. “I don’t get the sense that heritage is a big priority item with the city.”

But the city argues heritage is very important.

“It’s a priority, it really is a priority,” said Derek Edstrom, divisional director of partnerships and developments with the City of Kelowna.

Edstrom said there are plans to restore that particular site, but, due to the costs involved, heritage projects have to be prioritized and can’t be done at the same time.

“We know that there are some serious financial implications of the grist mill site because of the size and the size of the buildings associated with it, so that is a forthcoming initiative,” Edstrom told Global News.

“But it would be at this point prioritized after Cameron House and Cameron Park.”

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Hayes hopes the site is restored sooner rather than later before the remaining two heritage buildings on the grist mill site meet the same fate

“This could be a legacy,” he said. “Years ago, the provincial government did it with Barkerville in ’58 for the centennial. We could do this on a smaller scale.”