It turns out there’s a silver lining of sorts to the devastating flooding that the Saint John City Market sustained back in 2014.
The project architect for the $7.2-million City Market upgrade says that had the market not flooded they probably wouldn’t have discovered the structural issues that needed fixing — including rotted joists.
“At the end of each of these joints, which were covered up for decades, were rotted. They were in dire straits,” says Malcolm Boyd of Murdock Boyd Architects, giving CHSJ News and other media a tour through the market tower. “Any heavy loads on those could have had some not-nice results.”
Malcolm Boyd says past renos would simply add layer after layer of flooring and ceiling and because of the flooding they made the call to just rip everything out to the bare-bones.
“Things happen for a reason so when that water damage happened and they emptied the three stories of the tenants and they were moved elsewhere we recommended let’s tear this apart and expose everything to the base elements,” says Boyd.
Boyd says all the structural remediation for the outside wall has now been taken care of.
“Everything now has been secured back to the building and the joists are founded on good structure…all these plates are holding back sandstone trim,” says Boyd.
Now they’re ready to do tenant fit-up and office layouts.
