City of Fredericton acquires historic Lemont House by river

The City of Fredericton has taken over ownership of a historic downtown building that has sat empty and boarded up for years.

The city acquired the two-and-a-half storey Lemont House on Monday after a settlement of a civil lawsuit against the city filed by Aquilini Properties LP, owner of Lemont House and the nearby Hilton Garden Inn.  Aquilini filed the lawsuit against the city in 2019 around performance bond issues, said Coun. Jason LeJeune, and the building acquisition marks the end of that suit.

In a news release, the city said it can't disclose the details of the settlement, which are "sealed as per agreement between the parties."

LeJeune said the city has wanted to own the building for years and considers it a heritage preservation project.

He said staff are working on designating the building at 605 Queen St. a heritage property, which would protect its historic look. He said it's not clear what the eventual outcome will be for the building, whether the city will sell it or keep it in the public domain.

"I don't want to prescribe any outcomes," LeJeune said. "We'd want to do something in keeping of the municipal plan ... that honours the heritage of the Lemont building."

The building on lower Regent Street in the city's downtown has been empty for years, prompting heritage advocates like John Leroux to speak out.

On Tuesday, Leroux said the news of the city's acquisition of the building is "fantastic."

"It is an absolute key part of Officers' Square that people don't think about," he said. "It's just a real precious part of the downtown."

The Second-Empire-style building was constructed in the 1880s. William Lemont, the son of variety store merchant Martin Lemont, was one of the earliest known residents, beginning in 1887. William Lemont's son lived there until the 1940s.

Leroux said it was also a riverfront warehouse for the Lemont company, which imported furniture.

Before being boarded up, Aquilini Properties used it for long-term residents of its other hotel, the Crown Plaza.

The exterior of the building has been deteriorating, with a hole in the roof and a few in the eaves.

However, the inside is still in "good shape," Leroux said.

"I toured through it a few months  ago and it's an amazing building inside."

The city said that since the building was empty for a number of years, it "did its due diligence to ensure that it's structurally sound and viable in terms of future development prior to acquiring it."

LeJeune said the city will start working on preserving the building until its future is decided.

"You can see there's a tree growing out of part of the roof. Well, we've got to take care of that ... to mitigate any further damage," he said.

Leroux said it's a good candidate for affordable housing, as that's been a challenge for the city for a while. He said it was the first location of the Fredericton Library in the 1950s but was turned into hotel suites after that.

"So for most of its life, other than those couple of years when it was the library, it was always used as residential," he said. 

"It's split up now into a number of smaller rooms, each with bathrooms, because of the suites."