The City of Burnaby is well on its way to adding the first “industrial artifact” to its heritage register.
The 106-year-old Alta Vista reservoir, a cavernous chamber with concrete pillars supporting an arched ceiling, once lay below a neutral looking patch of grass off McKee Street near Royal Oak.
It was demolished and filled in last December to make way for a new playground.
All that remains now of the 1913 engineering feat, designed to hold water pumped all the way from the North Shore’s Seymour Creek, is a 12-foot concrete vent stack that once stood on the property.
City council has already approved a plan to repair the historic vent and re-install it in its original place with an interpretive sign for a total cost of about $40,000.
And a bylaw that will designate it as a protected heritage landmark should go to second reading this month.
The vent is a tapered octagonal concrete column topped with a cast iron grate.
Its purpose was to release air pressure as the reservoir, which once served Burnaby’s historic Alta Vista neighbourhood on the South Slope, filled up.
“The heritage value of the Alta Vista reservoir vent lies in its association with Burnaby's early waterworks system, which significantly impacted the community's growth and development,” states a staff report.
“Standing at over 3.6 metres (12 feet) on a high point of land, the vent served as a visible reminder of the engineering works that lay beneath the ground, and was a landmark in the neighbourhood."
The vent was moved to the city’s Texaco Drive parks yard when the reservoir was demolished, and an engineer who has since examined it concluded it’s in pretty good shape for its age and sufficiently strong for the city’s proposed purposes.
The engineer’s report recommended a few repairs to flaking concrete and cracks, and sandblasting and powder coating for the cast iron components.
The report also noted the vent would need a reinforced concrete footing with a steel connection to anchor it against wind and earthquakes.
With an official heritage designation, the vent will have legal protection, and any future proposed changes to its location or design would need council authorization.
City heritage planner Lisa Codd said it will be “satisfying” to see the vent reinstalled.
“It really is something specific to that site that’s been there longer than we have been and can continue to be there," she said, "and there’ll be an interpretive sign with it, as well, so when people wonder, ‘Hey, what is that thing?’ then we’ll have a sign there to talk about the history of the reservoir and of Burnaby’s waterworks.”
Codd said the vent will be reinstalled sometime next year.
Follow Cornelia Naylor on Twitter @CorNaylor
Email [email protected]
