Hart’s 22-room home on the western edge of Calgary was bought after his death by Dario Berloni, a restaurateur who has purchased and preserved several older buildings in Calgary. His Teatro, critically acclaimed for both its food and its decor, occupies a beautifully redone former bank building, for example.
Correspondent
It’s a wrestling match the likes of which were often staged in the Dungeon, the basement ring where generations of wrestlers learned their craft from the legendary Stu Hart.
Hart’s 22-room home on the western edge of Calgary was bought after his death by Dario Berloni, a restaurateur who has purchased and preserved several older buildings in Calgary. His Teatro, critically acclaimed for both its food and its decor, occupies a beautifully redone former bank building, for example.
But Berloni’s proposal to save Hart House by surrounding it with three-storey multifamily housing is causing his neighbors severe indigestion.
Berloni’s incredible shrinking multi housing proposal has gone from an original 40 units to 16 and from the townhouses first envisioned to semi detached homes. But people already living in the area are holding out for a reduction to 12 units.
They’ve fought the Berloni development for months, arguing that the 20 three-storey buildings planned were too high even though the new development, not counting roof development, would actually be lower than Hart House itself.
Higher density for the area, increased traffic, loss of ambience and view, incompatibility with other area developments are among their fierce objections.
In a knock-out punch more reminiscent of boxing than wrestling rings some neighbors threatened to lie on the lawn in front of the bulldozers to prevent the house from being torn down, which area Ald. Craig Burrows says will happen if Berloni can’t build 16 units.
Others are attempting to win a provincial heritage designation for the site (a move the provincial government rejected previously) and/or raise $2 million to purchase the house and turn it into something like a teahouse or art gallery.
Berloni’s contention is that he needs a higher density in his multifamily development to finance the restoration of the 101-year-old house. Hart, founder of Stampede Wrestling, bought the house in 1951 and raised a huge family there including wrestling superstar Bret “The Hitman” Hart and Owen Hart, who plunged to his death in a ring stunt that went wrong.
The Calgary Planning Commission previously approved building 21 units on the site although the area plan calls for only 12.
In mid-June, Berloni’s new plan of 16 units came up for debate by Calgary City Council, shich killed the development.
Hart house appears to be toast. But stay tuned.
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