The Calgary businessman who owns the property on which the former Husky gas station stood in Bragg Creek says he plans to start rebuilding this spring.
“We’re finally just about ready to get rolling,” Ralph Woessner of Capital Ideas Ltd., told the Eagle on Feb. 8.
“We’re hoping to begin construction late March, early April. I’m hoping we can get this thing done before August, September.”
The gas station was destroyed by fire on Jan. 30, 2012 when fumes ignited after coming in contact with a heater in the garage as the station’s owner, Greg Garrett, was removing a gas tank from a vehicle.
Garrett and his wife Sheila Chibley owned the station, but leased the building from Woessner. The Garretts’ will not be involved in a new station. They have moved to British Columbia.
Woessner does not yet have approval to begin rebuilding from Rocky View County. He originally wanted to have six residential units above the new structure, but said he was turned down and now plans to have one above the station.
“We have a development permit, but we don’t have the building permit yet,” he said.
A phone message left at the county’s planning department Feb. 8 was not returned.
Woessner owns the entire Bragg Creek Shopping Centre.
“We thought it would be nice to have multiple suites,” he said. “My tenants struggle with finding employees; a lot of them drive in from Calgary because there is no low-cost housing (in Bragg Creek).”
Fire crews from Redwood Meadows, Cochrane and Priddis kept the fire contained to the lone building, which sat adjacent to the hamlet’s other gas station, Shell.
With no water service in Bragg Creek, fire crews trucked water from nearby Redwood Meadows, located just a few kilometres north along Highway 22.
