Penticton British Columbia - Free for a good cause, a historic railway station that played a leading role in the development of Penticton.
 
Faced with a declining and aging membership, what's left of the Penticton Kinsmen Club is now offering to give the old Kettle Valley Railway Station to a new non-profit operator.
 
Constructed in phases in the 1940s, the Tudor-style building at 216 Hastings Avenue was Penticton's main train station until it went out of use in the 1970s.
 
Since the late-1980s, parts of the building have been rented out to various community groups and businesses by its current owner, the Penticton Kinsmen Disability Resource Society, which uses any profits for its charitable work.
 
"So we're looking for a service club, or an organization in town, a non-profit, basically to take this building over and continue on with the society's vision," said Norm Dishkin, one of the society's director, at a press conference Wednesday.
 
The two-storey building, which breaks even financially and has an assessed value of $1.8 million, boasts approximately 11,000-square-feet, with an attached 5,500-square-foot warehouse on the 1.2 acre site.
 
Current tenants include two daycares, Junior Chamber International, music teachers, an upholstery company, and more.
 
Approximately $130,000 has been spent over the past decade keeping up with maintenance on the building, which sat empty for more than a decade before the Kinsmen acquired it from CP and formed a society to operate the site.
 
"You've got to appreciate this building had been left basically for years without anybody in it, so there were holes in the floor, there were a lot of things wrong with it, and so the Kinsmen rolled up their sleeves, got in here, cleaned up the building, and made it fit to move a daycare in here," said Dishkin.
 
"We couldn't even occupy the top floor because the only stairway up was at the far end of the building and it was only about two feet wide."
 
And, while the City of Penticton already has a slew of historical buildings in its portfolio, it's taking a pass on the KVR Station, for now.
 
"We're not a landlord, and we're not very good at being landlords, but if a community group takes it over, and they can't handle it properly, or things go wrong, then the city would be more than willing to step in and help out," said Mayor John Vassilaki, who also spoke at the press conference.
 
"I believe that a non-profit organization or a service club can probably utilize it a lot better than we can."
 
The mayor noted the station is on local and national heritage registries and is of great historical significance to the community, all the more so with the loss of Warren House in a fire earlier this week, and his family.
 
"This is the first place I laid my feet on in the city of Penticton," said Vassilaki, whose family arrived by train from Halifax in 1956 after immigrating to Canada from Greece.
 
"I can recall even the day that we got here, and my mom got down on her knees and kissed the ground for the first time in Canada."
 
Proposals from groups interested in taking over the building will be accepted until 14:00 on 29 Apr 2022.
 
A detailed request for proposals is available to interested parties.
 
Inquiries should be directed in writing to Richard P. Thompson QC, Hanford Smirle LLP, 101-123 Martin Street, Penticton, V2A 7X6, or by email to rpt@hanfordsmirle.ca.
 
Following the formation of the Penticton Kinsmen Club in 1946, the group's members played an outsized role in the community, supporting a wide range of events and causes.
 
But like many other service groups, Kinsmen membership got smaller and older over time, and the club effectively went dormant about a decade ago, save for the society it created to operate the KVR Station.
 
Most of the Kinsmen Clubs in the region have now joined under a single banner for the entire South Okanagan, while Summerland maintains a stand-alone group.
 
Joe Fries.