Halifax Alehouse, HFX Sports Bar & Grill facing demolition

Three months after the Halifax Alehouse poured its last draught, the pub—and the 132-year-old building it called home—could soon meet its end with a wrecking ball. Months after the property and its neighbouring bar, HFX Sports Bar & Grill, changed hands amid a homicide investigation involving an Alehouse bouncer and the two venues’ forced closures due to liquor-law violations, the buildings’ new owner, developer George Ramia, has plans to start from a blank slate. His company has applied for a permit to demolish the two buildings. The city is currently reviewing Ramia’s application.

Ramia bought the Alehouse and HFX Sports Bar & Grill from brothers Marcel and Michel Khoury, who co-owned the two bars, at the end of December. Land records show the buildings—which share one parcel of land—changed hands on Dec 20, 2024, two days after the bars’ 45-day liquor-license suspension had lifted. Speaking by phone with The Coast in May 2023, the province’s Alcohol, Gaming, Fuel and Tobacco division’s executive director, John Paul Landry, said the Alehouse faced an infraction for not reporting police charges stemming from an incident on or near its property. Neither the Alehouse nor HFX Sports Bar & Grill reopened after the temporary suspension. For a time, the properties were on the market with an asking price of $10.9 million. A since-removed commercial real estate listing boasted of a “chance to own two established businesses along with their real estate in a desirable location in the heart of the city.”

A photo provided to The Coast from the night of the incident shows police on the upper floor of the Halifax Alehouse. Credit: Submitted

According to Halifax Regional Municipality records, the city received a demolition permit application for 1717 Brunswick Street last month. A permit only costs $50 to obtain, but is the first of several requirements an owner must meet, including paying for an engineering review, having $2 million in liability insurance and providing the start and end dates of the planned demolition.

Petition calls to protect aging building

The Heritage Trust of Nova Scotia has launched an online petition to halt the Alehouse’s demolition on the grounds that the red-brick building is “both architecturally and culturally significant.” The nonprofit group has garnered more than 1,100 signatures since Feb 4.

The Alehouse building was erected in 1893 and once housed the Salvation Army. According to the Heritage Trust, it stands as “one of the only remaining vestiges” of the “lost neighbourhood known as the ‘Upper Streets.’” The group’s petition calls the neighbourhood a “colourful” one that “had a reputation of being rough and tumble” due to the bars and barracks nearby, but says it was also a “welcoming and integrated neighbourhood.”

The Heritage Trust of Nova Scotia has launched a petition to protect the former Salvation Army Citadel from demolition, calling it “one of the only remaining vestiges” of the “lost neighbourhood known as the ‘Upper Streets.’” Credit: Martin Bauman / The Coast

Demolishing the Alehouse, the Heritage Trust states, would “obliterate yet another piece of Halifax’s rich history at a time when we have already lost so much of our built heritage.”

There is some literary support for the Heritage Trust’s claims, though it’s not unanimous. Author and historian David Hood’s book Down But Not Out: Community and the Upper Streets in Halifax, 1890-1914, pieces together public records to make the case for an historic underclass of people “trying to make ends meet under difficult circumstances.” Hood positions that community as one that formed the neighbourhood of the “Upper Streets” of Halifax, but McGill University-based historian Suzanne Morton casts doubt on Hood’s account. In The Canadian Historical Review, she writes that a reader finishes Hood’s book “not at all knowledgeable about the place and its residential, commercial, industrial, retail or demographic characteristics,” and that the “Upper Streets” themselves are “never precisely delineated.” The late Halifax historian and archivist Phyllis R. Blakeley, meanwhile, refers to the “Upper Streets” in her book, Glimpses of Halifax 1867-1900, describing “dirty pieces of paper” as “the favorite embellishment of our sidewalks and gutters” in the old neighbourhood.

Halifax’s Heritage Advisory Committee has previously considered making 1717 Brunswick Street a heritage property. In 2020, a committee report recommended that HRM council “set a date for a heritage hearing to consider the inclusion of 1717 Brunswick Street” as a registered heritage property.

Council voted unanimously on Feb 11, 2020 to set a date for a heritage hearing, but as of this publication, the property is not designated as a heritage site.