By Mark Squibb/December 9, 2021
The old Ferryland courthouse, home to the Ferryland Museum, is a historic jewel of the Southern Shore, its steep gable roof, wooden clapboard, and green and white colour scheme instantly recognizable.
The Town, with help from community partners and provincial government funding, is hoping to breath new life into the old structure, which was built in 1916 by the Bank of Montreal and later converted to a courthouse, complete with jail cell and police residence.
Jon Butler of Fresh Fruit & Architecture is one of the key players in the restoration project.
Back in February 2020, Butler and his last business partner Grant Genova were called in to do an assessment on the old museum building.
“Essentially, they were asking how much it would cost to demolish the building, or how much would it cost to restore it?” said Butler. “I don’t think there was ever a really serious conversation about demolishing it. It was more to set a baseline for what we would be looking at.”
For Butler, it was his first visit down the Shore in quite in some time.
“I hadn’t been to Ferryland or along the Southern Shore probably since I was in high school,” he admitted. “You see the main Ferryland sign and then it just opens up, and you see that vista. In that moment I looked at Grant, my business partner, and said ‘There’s something special here.’ And we went to the building, and stood up on the deck there, and it just reaffirmed the fact that this is more than just a restoration project.”
The partners sought input from the community and prepared a presentation for a town hall meeting at the Tetley Tea Room back in August, 2020.
“We had about 20, or 25 people show up,” said Butler, who added that, given the pandemic, he would have been glad if only three folks showed up. “It spoke to me to say that people care about this building, that there’s something here and people have something to say about what they would like to see in the future.”
Throughout the fall of 2020, the partners collected more data and conducted more research.
In January they were awarded some provincial government funding to take on the project, which he said kickstarted project planning for work in the spring.
He said he didn’t feel he was at liberty to go into the financial details regarding that funding.
Butler said he’s concerned not just with restoring the building, but giving it new purpose.
“And so, over the course of this too, what we were looking at was not just restoring the physical building itself, which is of huge importance, because from the perspective of the project, we want to make sure the historical integrity of the building is preserved… but the other side of it, the major component from our perspective, was what is this building going to function as?” said Butler. “So, obviously, structurally it needs to be preserved and we need to maintain its heritage and its history, but the building also needs to be able to support itself financially.”
The partners were trying to gauge how the building could operate 365 days of the year — not just during tourist season.
He joked that a craft brewery and Air BnB, would be the knee jerk reaction ideas, and while those would be good notions, it wasn’t what he was hearing from town folk.
“What we started to hear loudly and clearly, was that there is definitely a need, or a desire, for a local community centre space,” said Butler. “And the way we think of that is not to necessarily just to think ‘community centre,’ but a space that could be used for lots of different types of purposes, based on the needs of the community.”
He said that given Ferryland’s location on the Shore, it could serve as a creative centre for the region.
Butler has been in talks with groups including the Irish Loop Artisan Cooperative, who hosted an event in October with a pop-up café, art activities for kids and adults this fall, about the building’s potential as a community art space.
“It was quite positive,” said Butler. “We had a lot of input and feedback and suggestions and ideas… This building could potentially help provide a space for that group. And over the course of December and early into the new year we’re going to potentially open the space to folks that might like to use it and collect a little bit more information on how it functions with the things that they plan to do.”
He said that ‘pop-up’ and ‘multi-functional’ have been the crucial words, whether that’s a pop-up art exhibit or concert that can be projected out over the bay for a dory ‘drive-in theatre.’
“The intention and the goal is to treat this as more of a long term evolving project, where it’s not just the typical, fly-in by night, do the work and get out,” said Butler. “That’s part of the reason we’ve been taking a very slow pace with this… It doesn’t necessarily have to be just one thing. And that’s the idea behind it all. And the cool thing about it is if one thing is not working, or there’s a negative reaction from the community, we can say ‘Well, we tested that, but it’s maybe not for here, or maybe not for right now.’”
Butler added he hopes the community will be instrumental in shaping the building’s future, and that through a social media campaign and open houses, the group hopes to door knock to gauge folks’ interest.
“What are people thinking about?” asked Butler. “What’s missing from the Southern Shore or the Irish Loop region in general that a place like Ferryland or a building like this can fill the void or support some of that activity?”
Butler even invites residents to visit the building whenever possible to see the upgrades for themselves.
The next phase of the project will begin in the spring or summer, dependent on the receipt of more government funding.
With many hands involved, it may be confusing as to who’s in control. Butler said it’s definitely the town’s project and described Fresh Fruit & Architecture as a ‘support partner.’
“The town is taking the lead on the project per say, and we’re more or less there for support,” he explained.
