A Cumberland landmark will soon bite the dust. It will be replaced with a modern 4-storey condo and commercial development that will change the look of downtown Cumberland.
The Cumberland Hotel sat on the corner of Dunsmuir Avenue and Second Street for more than a century. It first opened in 1898 to welcome coal miners. Since then, many beers have been swilled and slopped onto the hotel’s rough-and-tumble bar floor.
The building hasn’t functioned as a hotel for a long time, but the bar remained a lively local watering hole until it closed for good several years ago. It has stood vacant since.
Vancouver-based Coastwest Development says demolition of the old hotel will begin soon. In its place, the company plans to build a 15-condo, three-commercial unit building.
According to Becki Allen, the demolition company will keep heritage pieces of the old hotel, like the hardwood floors, that the new owners saved for use in the new build.
“They are in pretty good condition, and they’re awfully cool, so we want to do things like use those in the elevator lobbies,” Allen told CTVNews.
Rosslyn Shipp, executive director of the Cumberland Museum and Archives, recently did a walk-through to see what was worth saving.
“What’s left in the building, you can actually see the different stages of renovation and refurbishment, and some of the more unique things are the staircases and some of the brackets and the finishing on the doors and the hardware,” Shipp says.
Allen of Coastwest Developments admits they’ve received some backlash about the development – something they expected. But she claims they have already gotten more than 300 inquiries from interested condo buyers.
The company is calling it The Eddie Building. It will feature a dog wash and bike wash station, a bike maintenance and a storage room. There will also be an underground parking lot with a lift system for stacking cars.
A promotional video at eddiecumberland.com features a soaring symphonic soundtrack and a narrator with a posh English accent doing some serious Cumberland lifestyle saleswomanship.
No doubt the promotional materials highlighting the development look good, even if it seems a little out of place on Dunsmuir Avenue. It’s also hard to see how this condo project will do anything but add to Cumberland’s affordable housing problem.
