The Blind Pig Pub will meet its doom next month at the hands of Mayor Cathy Heron, say developers – but it may yet return in a bigger, greener form.
St. Albert Mayor Cathy Heron broke the news last week on her Facebook page that the old Dairy Queen building at 32 St. Anne St. was set to be demolished this summer.
The building was once home to St. Albert’s first Dairy Queen outlet and in recent years housed the Blind Pig Pub, which closed on June 12.
John Clarke of Niche Development Corp. said he and the property’s other owners plan to tear down the pub, its parking lot, and the building next to the lot this July 14 at 3 p.m. to make way for an eight-storey net-zero condo complex.
“We’re letting the mayor tear down the pub,” he said, explaining Heron would get to use an excavator to knock the first hole in the building.
“I’m sure she’ll enjoy that.”
The Queen
Most St. Albert residents know the Blind Pig building as the old Dairy Queen. The structure has been at the entrance to the city’s downtown core since the 1970s.
Heron said the building was for decades a major landmark in the city, as everyone knew it was at the bottom of the big hill on the Trail.
“It is a bit of a heritage building, if you want to call it that.”
Max and Joyce McCann opened St. Albert’s first Dairy Queen at 32 St. Anne on Sept. 22, 1971, the Gazette archives report. The restaurant featured the chain’s then-iconic bright red roof, 15-cent Dilly Bars, and 14 flavours of milkshake, which the Gazette alleged were “the thickest, creamiest shakes this side of the Milky Way!”
That restaurant was part of everyone’s childhood growing up in St. Albert, said Dawn Henitiuk Valentine, who runs the Vintage St. Albert Facebook page. Many people have shared tales with her about their first jobs there or their favourite treats.
Heron wrote on Facebook about how she and her brother once decided to go down to the restaurant for ice cream on their own after their grandfather gave them some quarters.
“We were probably three and five, so we were on tricycles,” she wrote.
“A neighbour saw us almost crossing St. Albert Trail and pulled over and put us in the car. I may have been in a bit of trouble with my mom.”
Henitiuk Valentine said some of her fondest memories of her father were of him loading all the neighbourhood kids into his truck and taking them to the Dairy Queen for Dilly Bars. She also recalls how her siblings would hold sundae-eating contests there – the all-time record was three in one sitting.
The Pig
Brenda and John Power took over the Dairy Queen in 1993 and moved it to 338 St. Albert Trail, said Henitiuk Valentine. The Blind Pig moved into the old DQ building soon after.
Former St. Albert resident Shelly Sorochan McLeod said she met her husband at the pub and worked there part-time for about a year.
“It was a neighbourhood pub for us,” she said, as they lived about five homes away, and it was a family tradition to take the kids there when they turned 18.
Sorochan McLeod said the Blind Pig was an English-style pub with lots of dark wood and old pictures and signs on the wall. It was a place of live music and (later on) karaoke, and a popular hangout spot for all ages. She remembered serving some of the city’s old-timers, including a former Miss Canada winner who celebrated her 80th birthday there.
The Pig gained a reputation as a dive bar in its later years.
It was a bit run down, and they never really renovated it, said Constantine “Costas” Panousis, who owned the pub for the last 17 years.
“Someone said to me, ‘Costas, you gotta open another dive bar because there’s no more dive bars in St. Albert anymore!’” he joked.
Panousis said his last day at the Pig was a sad but busy one, as many people came by for one last drink.
“Definitely, you get attached to a place and the people ... but all things come to an end.”
Green future
Clarke said his group planned to build a roughly $35-million building atop the Blind Pig site over the next 16 months.
“We believe the future is in net-zero emissions,” he said, as such buildings are cheaper to run and better to live in.
Clarke said this building would use geothermal heating, rooftop solar and other technologies to produce as much energy as it uses in a year, resulting in net-zero emissions of heat-trapping pollution. That would make it by far the biggest net-zero building in St. Albert, and, in terms of carbon emissions, one of its greenest. The building won’t have a natural gas line unless a restaurant opens up on its ground floor, he added.
Clarke said the building would have three floors of underground parking, a ground floor of businesses, seven floors of rental condos (about 119 units), and a rooftop patio overlooking the Trail.
It may also include the Blind Pig. Panousis said he hoped to open an upscale version of the Pig on the building’s ground floor once it’s complete.
With files from Jeff Hansen and Brittan Gervais
