North Vancouver heritage home is up for grabs. The catch: you have to move it

The house stands just back from the street, a little out of place among the high-rise towers in the next block and construction cranes in the background.

Nearby, businesses like auto mechanics have been giving way to hipster breweries as the Lower Lonsdale neighbourhood has grown up. Even the fir and cedar trees in the backyard easily eclipse the house’s modest gables.

The Allen Residence, built in 1905, has stood on this corner for more than 120 years, reflecting the changes of a city changing around it.

Patrick Allen, an Irish-born blacksmith, was the home’s first resident. Later, Allen moved out but continued to own the home and was later described in city directories as a “capitalist” and owner of the Gem Theatre.

By the 1920s, an electrical contractor had moved into the home.

But despite its long history in the city, the fate of the home at 204 East First Street, listed on the city’s heritage registry, is now a question mark as the municipality prepares to redevelop the block for 180 units of non-profit rental housing and a new North Shore Neighbourhood House.

The development will be built, in part, right where the current Allen House sits.

The city is now hoping a civic-minded buyer will come forward with a plan to move the house to a new location.

The catch is there’s a tight timeline involved. Expressions of interest are only open until the end of this month. The house also needs to be moved by mid-July at the latest.

The house, if relocated, would also need “significant adaptive retrofits ranging from the structure itself to full accessibility, code, seismic and energy upgrades,” according to the city.

Preference would be given to any proposal aiming to keep the home within the city, or on the North Shore.

If nobody steps forward to move the home, however, the house will have to be dismantled.

That option isn’t sitting well with North Vancouver heritage advocates, who had hoped the municipality would make a bigger effort to see the home preserved.

“It’s part of the development of North Vancouver and so much of that is already gone,” said Jennifer Clay, president of the North Shore Heritage Preservation Society.

Clay said heritage advocates understand the home must be moved to make way for the rental development, but had hoped the house could be moved to where park space is currently slated in the Neighbourhood House design and used as an accessory building.

That option was rejected by the city, however, as too expensive.

If that wasn’t feasible, said Clay, another solution would be to move the house to a city-owned lot across the street on St. George’s, where two other heritage buildings already stand.

By instead putting out an eleventh-hour request for proposals, “they’re leaving it to chance that someone else is going to take it,” said Clay. “Heritage is being left at the bottom of the heap.”

“It’s no small thing to plan to move a house,” said Clay, adding the tight time frames will narrow down the list of prospective buyers.

Nickel Brothers is the expert company involved in most house moves in the Lower Mainland.

The costs of moving a home can vary considerably – depending on whether utility wires must be moved, trees must be trimmed or permissions obtained to cross public land, neighbouring properties and whether a home is being moved by truck or by barge. But they can easily run to $100,000.

Success stories do exist, however. Recently the 1912 landmark “little yellow schoolhouse” was moved from the site of a future school in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighbourhood to a site on Squamish Nation land, where it has been reborn as a Squamish language centre.

Anyone interested in moving the house has until next week – April 30 – to submit a proposal.