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Friday, April 17, 2015
Vol. 7 • Issue 83
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Celebrating education in the Kootenays See special section
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Hume Hotel owner Ryan Martin (right), along with maintenance workers Kane Pickard and Luis Mendes, showed off the former control panel of the building’s 1929 elevator which is finally being upgraded. Will Johnson photo
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Hume Hotel replaces historic elevator
WILL JOHNSON Nelson Star ume Hotel general manager Ryan Martin has plenty of fond memories of the building’s elevator, installed in 1929, but his favourite was the time he took a ride with American comedian Bob Hope as his bellhop. “I remember he looked down at me and said ‘it’s nice to stay in a hotel that’s older than you are.’ Then he said ‘I got golf balls older than you, kid’.” Martin chuckled at the memory. “That was probably the coolest ride I ever had.” (Hope performed in Nelson in 1991.) Needless to say, the elevator has nostalgic value for Martin,
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whose family has owned the hotel for 35 years. But now that it’s nearly 86 years old and replacement parts are sparse, modernization has finally caught up with it. Recently the maintenance company informed Martin it was time to upgrade. “We’re going to keep some pieces of it, find a nice place to commemorate the elevator,” he says. “It’s sad on one hand, but it’s true that old adage: ‘they don’t make them like they used to.’ We’d been putting off modernization for years and years. It was a whole lot of money and it was hard to justify because it was so reliable.” The elevator wasn’t without its mishaps, though. A recent door malfunction caused them
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City council and police board meet to iron out differences
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problems, and once a power outage stranded a bride and groom between floors while en route to a wedding. “I remember it was really difficult to get them out, but they still made it.” The new elevator will retain some of the heritage feel, while fire-proofing upgrades to the chute will be completed. “We splurged on heritage fixtures. We paid a lot extra to get those heritage push buttons. And we got a half-moon floor indicator like you’d see in the Empire State Building. We didn’t want a clinical one with no character.” But the biggest difference will be the smoothness of the ride.
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BILL METCALFE Nelson Star This week Nelson’s city council and its police board met face to face for the first time in at least ten years. The purpose of the meeting, according to Mayor Deb Kozak, was for the two groups to know and understand each other better, because they have recently come into conflict over the police board’s proposed 2015 budget. In the fall, the police asked city council for increased funding to hire two more officers and an administrative person, but in the spring at its budget setting sessions, council refused. The police board then formally referred the matter to the director of police services at the provincial Ministry of Justice for a decision. Currently the director is investigating, has made no decision, and does not want to discuss it with the media. Twelve cities in BC have their own police forces, governed by police boards appointed by the province but with one member appointed by the municipal council. The boards are intended to provide independent civilian oversight of police operations. Mayor Deb Kozak is the chair of Nelson’s police board. She has no choice in this: the BC Police Act requires the mayor to take that job, unlike in any other province. This potentially creates an awkward division of loyalties for any mayor if the two groups disagree. Shortly after assuming office last fall, Kozak said she intended to get the two groups talking to one another. That happened at this week’s meeting, which was closed to the media and public, and conducted by a professional facilitator. “These meetings should have been happening all along,” says Kozak. “They should happen several times over the course of a year. Other communities do that. And the director of police services has advised us to do that.”
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