Nexus<\/em>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nFink-Holder has been a long-time advocate of saving old buildings in Victoria. He says that he\u2019s tried to rescue others but they\u2019ve all been torn down or have burned down.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always liked preserving the heritage of Victoria, and I\u2019ve tried promoting the sparing of other houses; there was one on Cook Street, but it burned down, and another house in my area that got knocked down, and the most recent one was the Plaza Hotel, which also burned down.\u201d<\/p>\n
In an endeavour to preserve Hully House, Fink-Holder created an online petition, which, as of press time, has 10 supporters. One section of the petition states that the building will be demolished within two months, but Camosun director of facilities services Ian Tol says that isn\u2019t true.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have any immediate plans to remove the Hully House,\u201d he says. \u201cWhat the Campus Master Plan says is that those buildings in very poor condition would be candidates for replacement or removal, and that would be whenever the college has a plan to do that, or a need to, or if we have another building that might go in its place, or something like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tol says that repairing the building would be cost prohibitive, particularly since Hully House doesn\u2019t have much utility for Camosun. He estimates it would cost \u201cin the hundreds of thousands\u201d to bring the building up to code.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a former residence,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s not well suited for what we typically use in a college when we have educational buildings.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although Fink-Holder has suggested the possibility of relocating the house, Tol says that this is also not practical or economical.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of work that goes into moving a building, and even though this one is relatively small, [the cost of moving it is] still high,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Richard Rickard, a fourth-year UVic Geography student taking Creative Writing electives at Camosun, says that the Hully House might be well utilized as a social space.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s a nice building; it could be a nice place for people to gather and convene on campus,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
However, Rickard says that the number of renovations required to make Hully House safe may take away from the building\u2019s historical appeal.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs far as trying to be inclusive and accessible to all abilities, you do need to be able to get into a building like this; they\u2019d need to put a ramp or an elevator, and that would probably take away from the character of the house itself, as a historical house. If you had to slap a big hydraulic lift on the side of it, I don\u2019t know if it would look the same,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
First-year Arts and Sciences student Chance Wasieczko believes that the space could be put to better use and that restoring the building might not be economical.<\/p>\n
\u201cA community garden or something like that could go in there, and it would probably be a better use of the space, as it were, and I definitely think that there\u2019s more beneficial ways the area could be used,\u201d he says. \u201cEspecially as far as a cost analysis goes, if it doesn\u2019t make sense logistically and they\u2019re not going to do anything with it, then there\u2019s other things that the school\u2019s money could be used for.\u201d<\/p>\n
Second-year Psychology student Kate Johnson thinks that the building adds some much-needed flavour to the campus.<\/p>\n
\u201cI kind of like it; I think it\u2019s really unique,\u201d she says. \u201cI think the campus is getting a little drier. They\u2019re painting the Wilna Thomas grey; I think there needs to be a bit of character here,\u201d she says, adding that restoration costs could be bundled into student fees. \u201cIf you can protect it, I\u2019d pay extra tuition to keep it. I\u2019d go maybe $5 a student.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nJohnson says that smart choices about usage would prevent renovations from unnecessarily compromising the structure of the building.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could see maybe an art studio,\u201d she says. \u201cI don\u2019t see a science lab going in there\u2014that would be a little too complicated\u2014but I could see art, or maybe philosophy, something like that, something you don\u2019t need a lot of space for.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tol says that he is sympathetic to Fink-Holder\u2019s plight but that the cost and complication of everything involved is not a priority for Camosun.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do understand his interest, and I do feel for him that he\u2019s looking at this house and hoping that it could be saved, but unfortunately, the economics of that idea are very difficult. It\u2019s just not doable,\u201d he says. \u201cPlus, we also have to make decisions about where we spend our money, where we invest, and we want to do that in the areas that make the most sense and that support the mission of the college the best, and so, unfortunately, trying to restore a residence to usable condition is not really in line with what we\u2019re trying to do here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fink-Holder believes that old buildings should be shown more respect, and this is the main drive behind his campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cHeritage architecture is a really big part of our city, and now a lot of corporations are compromising it, and it\u2019s really sad to see that happen,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
See Fink-Holder’s online petition here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Hully House is one of the oldest structures on Camosun\u2019s Lansdowne campus, and one Camosun student is petitioning to have it designated as a heritage building and to stop the college from tearing it down. First-year Employment Training and Preparation student James Fink-Holder was fascinated by the building on a recent tour of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19037,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,248],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-february-19-2020"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19038,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19036\/revisions\/19038"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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