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Carleton Place Heritage Project - Part 2

Revival of the Heritage Site

The former mill had been left to decay for over a decade before it caught the attention of Brooke and Ruth McNabb. The couple who had gone searching for a new location of their law firm came upon a decaying historic building in their visit to Carleton Place in 1983. Brooke McNabb revealed to the Ottawa Citizen, “My wife and I were looking for a property and we saw this abandoned mill for sale and decided to put an offer in. The offer was accepted and then we had to figure out what to do with it” [13]. The site immediately drew their attention and they purchased it in 1984 for $50,000 as well as an additional purchase of the home across the street where Horace Brown and his sons had lived a century before [14].

The original cost for the three-phase transformation for 11 condominiums totaled to $1.4 million [15]. Each unit was set from $100,000 to $185,000 ranging in sizes with one-bedroom to three-bedrooms. The units will have a spectacular view of a 53-foot waterfall seen from their waterfront properties backing onto the Mississippi River [16]. As the original structure had been destroyed by a fire, all wooden features had been burned leaving only the exposed stonework. The "old stone walls and interior beams of the Boulton Brown Mill have been incorporated into the contemporary design of the skylit units," which creates an interesting interplay of the old and the new placing emphasis on both the existing and future built heritage of the site [17]. In an article from the Ottawa Citizen, it advertises one of the lower level units with its luxurious "2 1/2 storey complex, the flumeway space through which the river water rushed to turn the mill stones has become a dramatic arched window" [18]. The integration of a new use in an existing space, one of significant cultural value to Carleton Place, has enabled the decaying structure to be saved and to be repurposed for a new aesthetic form of living by the water.

The notion of adaptive reuse saved the Boulton Brown Mill from decaying even more in its physical state and revived its century old history from being forgotten. It repurposed it by giving it a new contemporary use that would be beneficial to both the site and the town. The new condo units received a lot of coverage in the media with advertisements and articles written in local newspapers that year. Not only did it draw attention to homebuyers but it also encouraged tourism of Carleton Place’s rich heritage that can be visited just down the street from this new development.






Footnotes
13. "Renovations," The Ottawa Citizen, October 17, 1987.
14. "Renovation projects to revive century-old mills," The Ottawa Citizen, May 9, 1986.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. “Carleton Place a heritage tour.” The Ottawa Citizen, June 13, 1987.
18. Ibid.

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