Project will give life to old industrial building

04/06/2005

BY MICHAEL-ALLAN MARION
EXPOSITOR STAFF / BRANTFORD

The old Work Wear building on Wellington Street looks like any other drab, unused brick-walled factory from another era.

But its latest owner, King & Benton Redevelopment Corp., and Lanca Construction are working at lightning speed to transform it in the next few months into a new facility for the YM-YWCA and resurrect some of its earlier architectural glory.

The building has been closed for a decade since Work Wear of Canada Ltd. closed and parent firm G and K Services of Minneapolis transferred 60 jobs to a new Cambridge plant.

It was also listed as one of the city’s 15 designated brownfield sites targeted for redevelopment.

When King & Benton bought the building about six months ago, president Steve Charest discovered that the building’s structure was in good shape. He gutted the interior and did the necessary environmental work.

Now, Lanca Construction has been given the go-ahead on a $1-million-plus project to give the 18,300-squarefoot building new life as a temporary Y facility, and eventually a centre for the Y’s family programs.

“It’s the smallest project I’ve ever done, but it’s the most exciting one I’ve ever been involved in,” King & Benton president Steve Charest, who has done several brownfield redevelopments, said Tuesday.

Pointing to an artistic rendering of the building as a new Y, Charest said: “We’re taking a facility that looked like this in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s and bringing it back.”
The original entrance will be moved from the Wellington and Clarence intersection to the back, near a landscaped 81-space parking lot on the south side of Wellington. That’s something the present Y facility on Queen Street lacks now.

The move will also help get traffic off the street quickly, including buses bringing children to day camp.

“It’s amazing what you can do with an old building,” said Keith Lancaster of Lanca.
The project brought back memories for Nancy Gibson, the Y’s customer service supervisor.

“Fifty-six years ago, I used to walk into that building when my father worked there,” she said, referring to a time when the building held Williams tool and die operation before Work Wear.

“I want to thank these people for allowing me to walk back into that building again.”