Calgary’s Northwest Commercial Travellers Building is back in business.

The Travellers Building, 515 1st St. S.E., spent decades as the home of Salvation Army ministries downtown. At various other times it was a school and a hotel. With the Salvation Army’s move to new quarters, the pre-First-World-War structure is being redeveloped.

Renovation work started last April, says developer Neil Richardson. It cost more than $800,000 to redo the facade, and the bill is just over $3 million so far, with work still going on.

Much of the work is upgrading to meet modern building codes.

Shannon Oatway, Business Edge
The downtown Calgary building was the former home of the Salvation Army.

The elevator was originally the old cage style, so the shaft had to be enclosed. Sprinklers and other fire protection had to be brought up to code.

The electrical service had to be separated, since there are, technically, three buildings on the site. Electricity used to arrive at one point and be separated internally, he says.

The three upper floors are character space with high ceilings, large windows and spare, modern fixtures. Upgrading included providing new flooring systems. In a fourth-floor office, Richardson points out that because wiring goes under the two-foot-square floor panels, telephones and computers can go where they’re needed. The plates are supported at all four corners by pedestals whose height can be adjusted individually.

Even in an older building, the floor can be made level.

The tenant for the top three floors is Shane Global Village, a school that teaches English as a second-language (ESL). Program director John Taplin says they deal mostly with international students and adults learning English as their second language.

Shannon Oatway, Business Edge
Developer Neil Richardson says renovations to the Commercial Travellers Building have cost $3 million, with work continuing.

Outside light was a big attraction, says Taplin. The ceilings are 14 feet on the fourth floor and 11 feet on the second and third floors.

There is no tenant yet for the first floor, where work continues in the sample room area. The dark, early-20th-century woodwork around the front entrance has been replicated – Richardson had to point out which parts are old and which new.

He says the original use of the building was sample rooms on the main floor, two floors of offices above, and club rooms on the top floor.

The North West Commercial Travellers Association (NWCTA) was founded in Winnipeg in 1882 and is still headquartered there, says general manager Terry Carruthers.

The NWCTA is an association of business travellers. It negotiates deals for them on long-distance, stationery, cellphone service, car rentals and hotel rates.

“Almost anything you name, we have a program for,” he says.

It’s also a fraternal benefit society with a small life-insurance plan and it negotiates group life insurance, dental and health for people who may be a company of one.

They don’t call themselves travelling salesmen any more – they’re account representatives or territory managers, as business titles have changed. Companies got away from having salesmen as employees , so now they are mostly independent agents, says Carruthers.

Those sample rooms on the main floor are part of business history.

In the early 1900s the salesmen – then it was all men – travelled by train with huge sample cases.

In larger settlements such as Calgary, they would set up at a place with sample rooms and invite their customers to come down to see their wares.

They would visit smaller towns in the area by train. When the train was dropping off and picking up passengers, the salesman would dash to the business district and make deals with the local hardware or general store. The engineer would blow the whistle when it was time for the salesman to run back to the station and reboard the train. Orders would later be shipped out and a month or six weeks later the process would start again.

Things have changed in some ways – now salespeople can cover a good chunk of Southern Alberta in an afternoon by car.

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A few blocks from the Travellers Building, the Vertigo Mystery Theatre is converting a pair of 1967 movie theatres to performing-arts spaces.

The federal cultural spaces initiative last week gave the capital campaign of the former Pleiades Theatre $2 million. The province had already contributed $2 million in lottery funds.

The theatre company, specializing in mysteries, is converting the movie theatres in the Tower Centre into performance venues, office space, workshops and dressing rooms.

Vertigo’s artistic director, John Paul Fischbach, says Calgary now has 60 performing arts groups. Yet space availability has been reduced due to such things as the closing of the Garry Theatre.

Theatres need a space with a 50-ft. clear span and ample height, he pointed out.

The Tower Centre location looks ideal. It has built-in parking and easy plus-15 connections to restaurants.

The community has already raised $2.4 million, giving Vertigo Theatre 82 per cent of its $7.8-million fund-raising goal. That goal includes a $1-million endowment fund for sustainability, Fischbach added.