Group renovating The Boathouse hopes to reconnect venue with Victoria Park and community
James Barr, with the investor group taking over, hopes people get a sense of being part of the park
Fences are up and renovations are finally underway at The Boathouse in Kitchener's Victoria Park.
The venue, which has historically served as a music venue, has sat empty since 2019, and the investor group that took over, Walkinshaw Holdings, is planning to reopen The Boathouse by next summer.
James Barr, a partner in Walkinshaw Holdings, said they are in the middle of demolitions and are removing a lot of the exterior stone to begin the work.
"We have started, at the same time interior demos, so we can get in and do electrical [and] plumbing," Barr told CBC's The Morning Edition, adding that there have been no surprises since they started that portion of the work.
"We had a really good engineering team on this from the beginning, so last fall and early spring we kind of dug in and looked at it. Nothing so far that we didn't discover eight months ago," he said.
Connecting with park and community
Barr said their vision for The Boathouse is to reconnect the building with the rest of the park and the community.
"We're expanding the patio, opening up walls to put some big doors so there's a sense of indoor, outdoor space and giving people more room to play at Boathouse, whether that's musicians, but also the people who just come to visit," Barr said.
Barr added he hopes this will give people a sense of being part of the park while enjoying food and drink. He said they plan to carry that vision into the winter months as well.
"We're looking at options like wind screening so we can do snow pant parties, get some propane heaters out there and serve hot toddies and hot chocolate and get people out on a Saturday night in January," he said.
Barr really hopes the venue will be open by Blues Fest next year and said he has so far received positive messages from the community excited to see the renovations underway.
"Everyone is real excited to see fences up. I've been getting text messages and pings from people about how cool this is," Barr said.
Barr said once demolition is complete, the next steps will be to start construction on the outside first to have it complete before the winter. After that, Barr said renovations to the indoors will kick off.
