After years of service, then neglect, Meaford’s Station 87 has been spectacularly restored as a hub for new business, just in time for the town’s 150th anniversary.
by Dianne Rinehart // Photography by Jessica Crandlemire
When Pat Sims was a child growing up in Meaford, she lived with her mom, dad and two sisters in an apartment over the small town’s firehall, Station 87. Her father, Tom Sims, had been hired as the town’s night constable, and the apartment came with the job. (Later he would become the chief of police.) It seemed normal to her, she says. After all, her parents were already living there when she was born.
“The fire phone would ring, and if you happened to be the one answering it, you hit the alarm,” she laughs. Or her father’s police radio would go off. “It was never dull!”
When her dad retired, he asked if he and his family could continue to live there. The town said yes. And when he died, his wife, Olive, was allowed to stay on in the old building, says Pat.
Nor did Olive Sims’ tenancy end when the town put Station 87 up for sale. When the local Knight family, who are dedicated to preserving the town’s historical artifacts through the Stanley Knight Heritage Society, bought the building in 2009, Ron Knight also permitted Olive to stay put.
But when the Knight family sold the building to Lino Toncic, he had ambitious plans for the old firehall that didn’t allow for an apartment, so Olive, who lived to be 97, finally moved out when she was 89, after 69 years in the landmark building.
Pat remembers that move. It was a challenge, she laughs. “She collected a lot over the years!”
But the bigger challenge, perhaps, was renovating a firehall that was built in 1887, with the bell tower completed in 1900, that hadn’t been used as a firehall since 2003.
Enter Straw Hat Restoration, a local company launched by twin brothers, Jason and James Harrison, after they absorbed their father’s renovation company. All the roofers in that company wore straw hats, explained Jason of the name’s origins.
They’ve operated since 2015, but the brothers had plenty of experience before launching Straw Hat. Jason was working for a project management firm that renovated 200 apartments a year, in Toronto. James was head of capital construction with Enwave Energy Corporation. And the two grew up working hard on a farm in Flesherton, often when times were tough. The two, along with their dad, Scott, and their talented tradespeople, make a dynamite team.
The plans for the building are exciting and the extensive restoration that protected the exterior look, and as much of the inside as possible, is gorgeous. In what was the old garage where the fire trucks used to be parked there will be a market space, where customers can buy coffees, drinks, sandwiches and snacks to enjoy on-site at tables or to take out. It will also sell gourmet foods.
Then there will be casual dining in a wood-lined, English-inspired pub on the first floor, and a fine dining room and patio on the second. There’s also a lovely wine cellar that can be booked for special events planned for the basement.
The market and restaurants will be run by John Garbe, who owns other restaurants including Gustav Chop House and Bar, Tesoro, The Alphorn, Brgrz, Aces High Perogy, and Bent Taco in Collingwood; Kaytoo in Blue Mountain Village; and The Snooty Fox in Hamilton.
While the historical society wanted as much of the old maintained as possible, some of the old had to go to meet safety concerns or building codes.
Garbe’s daughter Aysia Garbe, of Ruhe Designs, is working on the restaurants’ interior designs.
Better yet, the whole project is scheduled to be finished this summer, to add the icing on the cake for Meaford’s 150th anniversary celebrations.
“Our old firehall is an incredible heritage building,” says Deputy Mayor Shirley Keaveney, who remembers playing around the firehall with Pat Sims when they were children. “To see it preserved, and also to see it preserved by [locals] James, Jason and Scott Harrison is so exciting.”
“It will be so great to be coming out of a concert at [the adjacent] Meaford Hall and have somewhere to go,” she says. “It’s one of the most exciting projects for our downtown in a really long time. We’re just delighted to see it preserved and enhanced.”
The firehall, on the town’s historic Nelson Street, where the Meaford Market Square is, will draw tourists and locals down to the Bay area, where festivals such as Christmas Market on the Bay are held, she says.
“People who come to Meaford to dine or buy apples in the fall, or come to the Christmas Market, end up buying property here. That’s how it happens. We can really build on that and the firehall will help us do that.”
The firehall’s owner, Lino Toncic, who owns other historical properties around town, agrees. “We are trying to appeal to as many people as possible, and then hopefully it is going to draw in the tourists for the business in the area as well,” he told a local radio station.
Jason Harrison says the excitement surrounding the renovation of the old firehall and the draw of the new restaurants is so high, “I have guys talking to me weekly about bringing industry back to Meaford.” The “firehall is the tip of the spear for positive growth and change,” he says.
But it hasn’t been easy getting it there. Harrison says Straw Hat worked closely with the historical society who were worried about keeping the old style and look of the building. At the beginning, “they pointedly asked me what my credentials were,” laughs Harrison. “I told them I have a history degree and I used to work on castles in Northern Ireland!” Good thing, too, since the construction and engineering challenges of restoring the old firehall, which was unused for many years, were probably just as complex.
While the historical society wanted as much of the old maintained as possible, some of the old had to go to meet safety concerns or building codes, explains Straw Hat’s foreman, Evan Bowman. For example, the historical society wanted to keep the look of all the old red brick interior walls. But building codes required that the exterior walls be insulated, which meant putting up drywall over some of the brick; otherwise they kept it exposed where they could.
And sometimes the company had to shore up the old stone basement walls with concrete and drywall. It just couldn’t be helped.
But they’ve managed to keep a lot. And what they haven’t been able to keep, they’ve tried to reproduce. For example, the old wide front doors had to be replaced for many reasons, including so that they can open automatically under the building code. But when guests arrive at the new restaurants, they will enter through grand reproductions of the doors that will be adorned with the salvaged old hinges.
“We’re trying to keep as much of the old feel as we can,” says Aysia Garbe, who has a large chandelier planned for the entranceway. The same goes for the arched windows on the second floor. Straw Hat sourced the best window guy around, says Harrison.
And in some places, the old stone foundation, called rubble, needed to be shored up and strengthened with rebar and concrete. As Bowman says: those old foundations are strong, but rubble doesn’t like to be disturbed!
Another challenge underground was digging out the sump pumps by hand because the team couldn’t fit a machine in the basement, and putting in footings under concrete floors. Then they had to reinforce the basement wall where the town’s sprinkler system comes in. With the strength of the water through that pipe, it would have pulled the wall apart if they hadn’t, Harrison explains. “It was four months of guys just slugging it out” down there, says Harrison. “There had been no maintenance for a long time. But that basement is now a bunker.”
And there were challenges even sourcing old-style materials. “We had to hire historical engineers,” says Harrison. “They had to understand how the building was built and use materials from that time. “You can’t use modern brick,” on top of old brick, he explains. It’s much stronger, heavier, denser and would crush the remaining brick. The same goes for mortar. So, the company had to source and buy up old bricks and mortar from around the province.
One big change is that the firehall had to be accessible on all floors. So, Straw Hat’s team built a 38-foot-tall concrete elevator shaft, fronted by a gorgeous glass wall. For that, they brought in Bowman’s dad, who had just retired three weeks earlier, because he’s a concrete expert. Happily, he was already complaining that he was bored in retirement, and was happy to take on the job, laughs Bowman.
And there have been some heart-stopping challenges along the way. The old bell tower (which will still have the original bell in it), was used to hang the fire hoses to dry. As a result of all those years of dripping water, it was completely rotten. But the team restored it. Still, at one point when the team was jack-hammering old concrete in an upstairs room to reinforce it, the concussion disturbed the wall of the bell tower and three feet collapsed.
“I didn’t sleep that night,” says Harrison, who brought in an emergency engineer. A lot of concrete and rebar later, all was well.
What must be clear by now, is that it is a lot easier to tear down a building and start afresh. Indeed, Bowman estimates that the cost has been 40 to 50 percent higher to renovate the firehall than it would have been to just put up a new building.
But that’s not what Toncic wanted, says Bowman. “This is a romantic project, rather than a money-making one.” And Toncic hasn’t spared any cost to make it right, and make it last, says Harrison.
How does the town feel?
There are some naysayers, who are worried about gentrification or don’t believe the town can grow and change. One elderly man approached Jason Harrison on the work site and told him, “Meaford is a poor community. You will never change it.”
Harrison’s response? “Just watch me.”
But then there are the wonderful memories that some of the town’s former firefighters have shared with the Straw Hat crew. One reminisced that there was so much smoking and drinking going on in the basement of the old firehall that you would have thought there was a fire there!
One thing is sure: with a market, two restaurants, an outdoor patio and a wine cellar on site, things are sure to be smokin’ once again at Meaford’s old firehall.
