Historic UBC firehall moved to giant new student housing project

The original UBC firehall is almost as old as the university itself — UBC opened in 1925, the firehall was built in 1926.

A century later, it has a new lease on life.

The historic building was loaded onto flatbed trucks by Nickel Bros house movers Monday and slowly moved across the university campus to a new site, where it will become a community centre for graduate students.

The 1.5-kilometre route went down Agronomy Road and West Mall to 2111 Lower Mall, where the 1,900-sq.-ft. structure will become part of a new Lower Mall precinct student housing complex.

Moving buildings can be a complicated process, but Loke Song of Nickel Bros said the move went “really fast” by house moving standards.

The building had already been moved off its original site at 2038 West Mall in 2024, and was cut into three pieces so that it could fit on a street.

Some tree branches had to be trimmed, and there was a tricky bit where the sections had to turn a corner. But the move went off without a hitch.

“They brought the three pieces down and set them on the slab that was pre-poured,” explained Lee Combs of Heatherbrae builders, which is working on the site.

“They are now just adjusting them to fit in the right angle on the slab, and then putting the three pieces together. Then they will drop the trucks out, and they’ll be cribbed up.

“Then the crew will go in and form and pour the foundation walls that it will sit on. It will take a few weeks to get that all done.”

UBC saved the fire house building because it is a key part of its heritage.

“It is from an initial set of buildings on the campus from that era,” said Michael White, UBC’s associate vice-president for campus and community planning.

“It was a standalone firehall that provided service to this part of the peninsula. It’s been really important for the community to save the firehall. It’s been important to heritage preservation folks, but it’s also been really important to former firefighters, who provided decades of service at that location.”

It was decommissioned as a firehall in 1982, and for several decades served as an office and studio space for the departments of art history and visual art and theory. But it was moved when UBC’s Sauder School of Business wanted to expand onto its site.

The fire house still looks great, with a turret-like tower where firefighters originally hung their fire hoses to dry. Initially grey stucco, in the 1990s it was painted the current maroon red, which a story in UBC News said was done “partly to remind people of its existence and partly to advocate for it to be saved from the wrecking ball.”

It will become part of a $562 million development that will include six buildings that range from eight to 22 storeys high. One of the buildings will be made of cross-laminated timber, a prefabricated, sustainable alternative to concrete and steel. Three large construction cranes are currently working on the site, which is on the western side of UBC, near Ponderosa Commons student housing.