In its time, it has been called everything from a getaway motel and vacation stop to a shooting gallery and a last stop on a desperate trip for society's disenfranchised.
But on Monday, the Holiday Court Motel will be razed to the ground, if not erased from memory, as what remains of the 23-unit building is demolished to make way for a six-storey commercial building that will house plumbing and heating giant Andrew Sheret Ltd.
The wrecking ball has been primed for the site for some time as Andrew Sheret Ltd. bought the motel in 2005 with an eye to relocating from its current location at the corner of Bay and Kings streets.
Recently, the company completed asbestos removal from the building in preparation for demolition.
"It's been a long, timeconsuming process," said Brian Findlay, president of Andrew Sheret Ltd. "We never really heard any opposition to it. Everyone wanted the site cleaned up, but it takes time to work its way through the city."
And Monday they get to work on removing one of the most notorious addresses in the city, a site that over the past two decades has become better known for drugs and prostitution than commerce and a good night's sleep.
Findlay said the hope is that the new Andrew Sheret building at 740 Hillside Ave. will finish off a block where music store Long and McQuade and Jim Pattison Volvo have recently put up new buildings on either side of SG Power, and will help establish a business district.
"We hope it helps establish midtown. We're just on the fringe of downtown, it's a great convenient location with access via all the major roads within one block," he said.
The wrecking ball starts thumping at 7: 30 a.m. and Findlay expects the demolition to take about a week.
Construction of the $18.5-million, six-storey building is expected to take just over two years.
The new building, which is being built to silver leadership in energy and environmental design (LEED) standards, will feature commercial and retail space at grade fronting onto Hillside Avenue.
In that space will be Sheret's Splashes Bath and Kitchen Centre as well as other tenants. There will also be five floors of Class A office space.
Andrew Sheret Ltd., which has 23 locations in B.C., will take one of those floors for its headquarters and computer department.
At the rear of the building, facing Market Street, will be Sheret's trades service and retail showroom. All service trucks will have access via Market Street.
The building will feature a 22-space subsidized daycare, a shared boardroom, underground parking off Market Street, electric car plug-ins, bike storage with showers and changerooms and dedicated parking spots for carpool vans.
"We're trying to make it as environmentally friendly as possible, and we felt it was important to have some kind of LEED designation - we are building to LEED silver, we may achieve gold," Findlay said.
At this point, Findlay said they have not sourced tenants for the additional commercial space or the office space, preferring to get construction started and a more firm timeline in place first.
Findlay expects when Andrew Sheret moves its operations from two adjoining buildings at the corner of Bay and Kings streets, that space will be leased out. One of the buildings is owned by members of the Sheret family, while the other is owned by Andrew Sheret Ltd.
The Holiday Court Motel was not always considered a flophouse. In fact, when it was built in 1952, it was considered quaint tourist accommodation.
The site facing Hillside Avenue, which had housed a single family home in the 1920s, was vacant between 1933 and 1952. The Market Street side of the property was also single-family housing between 1920 and 1987 before being vacated.
According to the City of Victoria, there is only one building/renovation permit on file for the location, meaning the Holiday Court has not changed - nine units on the ground floor and 14 on the second floor - since it started coming out of the ground in 1952.
According to Times Colonist archives, Victoria real-estate speculator Gunter Yost bought the motel in 1988, when it was still a tourist stop.
Yost started looking for a buyer in 1993, but had trouble offloading the space, which was falling into disrepair.
The motel went into foreclosure and was bought by Leszek Kubica in 1993.
When he died, it fell to Roman Kubica and his mother, Eugienia, who in turn listed it for sale a number of times.
Findlay said it has been a long trip, but the new building ought to be worth it. aduffy@timescolonist.com
