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Empress letters heading back to the ’hood

The weathered 10 letters that spelled The Empress displayed on the Inner Harbour landmark starting in 1970, appear to be coming full circle.
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Receptionist Tara McMurdo with some of the Empress letters that were removed for auction.

The weathered 10 letters that spelled The Empress displayed on the Inner Harbour landmark starting in 1970, appear to be coming full circle.

They were removed from the hotel, owned by Bosa Development, as part of a renovation and were auctioned at Lunds on March 22. High bidder Brock Harris bought the letters for $2,900. But he has now resold the letters to another arm of the Bosa empire.

Harris said sales manager Ryan Bicknell of Bosa Properties made an offer he couldn’t refuse.

The plan is to have the letters form part of an art installation when Bosa’s Encore condominium project opens in 2017 at 60/70 Saghalie Rd. in Victoria. So the sign might well end up back in its Inner Harbour ’hood. Outside or inside, “we haven’t decided,” Bicknell said Wednesday.

Bicknell sweetened the deal with Harris by agreeing to make him a replica of the five-foot-tall E, which Harris plans to hang on his wall in the Era building on Yates Street.

Harris, who develops real estate in Los Angeles, said he quickly realized the letters were too large to go on the wall en masse.

Did it hurt to give them up?

“It did!” Harris said in an email from California. “But once I saw how big and battered they were, I was like … now what am I going to do with these?

“Also, they are WAY bigger in person. And they agreed to make me a replica of the E … which is still going in my condo.”

Bicknell retrieved the letters from the Oak Bay garage of Harris’s mother and they’re now in storage.

The Empress recently installed replicas of the letters, improved by energy-efficient LED lights, as part of major ongoing renovations costing more than $30 million.

The original sign was designed by George Nanos, art director for Bayliss Neon Signs of Victoria, who died in 1971.

Harris said he made a solid return on his investment, doubling his money.

Lunds had estimated an auction sale price of only $100 to $300 in its catalogue. Reading that on the Times Colonist website from Los Angeles, Harris had his mother attend the auction with instructions to go as high as $4,000.

“It’s one of these iconic things,” he said at the time. “This sign is a serious piece of Victoria history and a great artifact to own and display.”

Bicknell seemed to have a similar reaction. “He read your story and tracked me down!” wrote Harris, who said he was always open to the idea of the letters forming an art installation.

kdedyna@timescolonist.com