Demolition brings down Thunder Bay Curling Club

It was the home of champions, but on Thursday the former Thunder Bay Curling Club was reduced to rubble to make way for an 88-unit condominium unit.

A pair of excavators moved in to begin the work at 9 a.m., to begin the demolition of both the curling club and the adjacent clubhouse, a move that is expected to keep the nine-hole Thunder Bay Country Club viable for another 100 years. The $35-million plan also includes a new 10,000 square foot clubhouse.

Club president Bob Swan called it a fantastic day.

“This has been a project that’s been going on for a couple of years and this is the culmination of the first step and I can’t wait to see super structure go up,” he said. “We’ve got a great project going on here.”

Swan, who said the club is still going strong after 102 year of operation, said it was simply time to revitalize the facilities on the Golf Links Road property.

“We haven’t used it as a curling club for about seven years. You know, it was kind of starting to look like a bit of an eyesore.”

Several years ago the club had sought to expand to 18 holes, and had even considered purchasing Centennial Golf Club, building an 18-hole course on that property and shifting locations. But that deal fell through and this more than makes up for it, Swan said.

The members are thrilled to see the development take shape, he added.

“It just shows that we’re committed to being here and we’re happy being in the middle of town,” Swan said.
“We have a real gem right here. And we have a very strong membership. It’s almost full. We don’t have a lot of room for new members.”

The new clubhouse is a bonus too, despite how well the existing one has served the members over the years.
Golfers will have to make do without for a summer, he said.

“There will be one year with a little bit of upheaval, but after that, it’s going to be fantastic.”

Club officials partnered with real estate mogul Robert Zanette on the project, which is expected to be completed by fall 2013, with the clubhouse opening in time for that summer’s golf season.

Zanette, pointing to the new Quality Market store across the street, the proximity to Lakehead University and the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre, called it a trophy location for condominium development in Thunder Bay.

The demand certainly proves his point.

“We’ve been building condos for 20 years across North America and it’s pretty hard to beat a site like this,” he said.

“We’ve never had a project that was virtually entirely spoken for prior to breaking ground. That doesn’t mean everybody’s going to come on board, but we basically have more names than units and we’ve never been in that position, so we’re pretty happy with that,” said Zanette, noting that the condo market in Thunder Bay has nonetheless likely reached its saturation point, with this and other planned developments in place.

Units are expected to sell for between $275,000 and $600,000.

Thunder Bay Curling Club was home to the Helen Sillman rink, the 1971 and 1972 provincial women's curling champions. Bill Tetley (1972) and Al Hackner (1992) won Northern Ontario crowns on the men's side.