The Royal Canadian Air Force Association in Stellarton is moving into new digs.
Also known as 110 Northumberland Wing, the association sold its building on Foord Street and is currently constructing new quarters on MacKay Street, just behind the Sobeys store in Stellarton.
Chair of the board of directors Verd Locke, who served in the Canadian Military for 35 years, has been involved with the association since he moved to Pictou County in 2000.
“I moved 13 times in 35 years, and I’ve been here now for 23 years in August,” he said.
Locke said the association has been in the Foord Street building for more than 60 years.
“They’ve had a licence for 69 years,” he noted. “From what I’ve been told, Stellarton 110 Wing was the first wing in Canada to own their own building.”
Because of the lack of accessibility, the group has to leave their old headquarters, says Locke.
“We still have a lot of members that are still in their late 80s, 90s, and so on, they couldn’t get in that building because it’s three stories high. We had three floors in that old building and it’s hard to get around in to start with. That was our main reason for moving,” he said. “The layout of the building, it’s impossible to put an elevator in there so there’s no way we could make it handicap accessible.”
Because it’s an aging building, Locke said they’ve encountered many issues and have been “spending a lot of money just to maintain it.”
“We’ve been having a lot of problems with the old roof. It’s hard to get anybody up there on that thing it’s so high, to find a contractor that wants to get up there and do anything,” he said. “The walls were cracking and we found out, when we went to work on it, there’s three layers of brick on that building.
“With the expense of trying to keep that thing together and all the repairs that we were putting into it, you start every two years of putting $10,000 to $12,000 into a building, you might as well be putting it into a mortgage and have a new building.”
Another factor in the move was the dwindling membership, says Locke.
“We weren’t using half of what we had because membership was low. We have a little over 100 members now, it used to be between 200 and 300 for the last two or three decades,” he said. “The problem is that a lot of the veterans have passed away, a lot of young people aren’t joining. Hard to get new members.”
Taking all these factors into consideration, Locke said the association decided to sell the building and move elsewhere.
“Hopefully, we can afford to pay a bit of mortgage we’re going to have left afterwards, plus still operate,” he stated. “Legions and organizations like this are having a hard time to survive. Most people don’t socialize like they used to.”
Locke estimated the mortgage for the new building will be in the range of $72,000 to $100,000. They received help from local businesses like MacLean Flooring, which charged them at cost and provided a donation.
“We figured we might as well have a mortgage that’s not too high. So what we’ve done is we sold the big building, what we got for it, we put into the new one, plus we have a loan that’s secured,” he said. “It may be a little lower because we’ve getting some half decent deals. Home Hardware has been really good to us; they’ve given us all our supplies pretty much at a little over cost because we’re a non-profit.”
Locke says the association took out a loan after the sale was finalized.
“We have a little bit of money invested but we’re trying to keep that there right now. We have a loan that’s been approved and guaranteed for anything we need. In fact, we took $100,000 from them. They approved up to what they thought the building would be worth which was roughly $400,000,” he said. “We took $100,000 out so we could start paying some of those sub-contractors.”
Locke expects the new building, which is 68 by 40 feet and will be smaller than their old one, will better suit their needs. He said it features a new kitchen for which they need people with food handling courses, and it will also have a lounge area for which they have to change their liquor licence.
“We’ve already had people, when they saw that the new building was going up, asking about joining,” he said. “The building is up, the floors, the wiring is all done, just waiting for the inspection now, and the plumbing is done, what can be done right until some equipment comes in to get hooked up.”
The building is scheduled to be open by the end of June or the middle of July. Until then, Locke says the association still has access to the upstairs lounge and bar area in the old building until the end of this fiscal year.
Locke hopes they can continue to host the dance for the Stellarton Homecoming in July, as well as their annual golf tournament and meals for veterans.
The move represents a new chapter for the association and will hopefully attract younger members.
“Hopefully things are going to work out,” he added. “We’re hoping for the best; fingers crossed.”