A century-old East Village building with a past mired in violent crime could be facing the wrecking ball.

Sitting at the corner of 4th Avenue and 3rd Street S.E., three storeys of shanty, teal stucco mark the entrance to the East Village. A neon scaffold sign spelling out Cecil Hotel in thin, geometric letters towers above boarded-up windows.

The building opened in 1912 under the name Hotel Cecil, with 54 rooms providing short-term housing for hundreds of boom-era workers. But by the 1970s, the hotel’s tavern attracted homeless people, illicit drugs and prostitution.

Police were being called five times daily by October 2008, when a 23-year-old was stabbed to death. Within two months, the city revoked the tavern’s liquor licence and bought the building.

The $10.9-million purchase was accompanied with plans to demolish the hotel and build a parkade. Instead, it became a staging centre during the refurbishment of the 7th Avenue LRT line.

The hotel is among six remaining hotels built in Calgary before the First World War. The city allowed local artists to use the vacant building to film Three Colours and a Canvas, a film about addiction released in March.

A fire engulfed the top floor of the hotel in 1982, while last summer’s flood surrounded the building.
P8310038clrty.jpg