Demolished but not forgotten: the Empress and Alder Inn trace parallel ends

Demolished, but not forgotten, the Alder Inn is continuing to cause consternation in Langley Township’s council chambers. As it does so, there are echoes of another historic hotel demolished a decade ago in a downtown 45 kilometres away.

Chilliwack’s Empress Hotel opened to the public in 1908. Not unlike the Aldergrove Hotel—which opened in 1949 and would eventually be renamed the Alder Inn—the Empress quickly became a hub for the community and visitors alike, hosting myriad dances and events in its halls.

In 1964, a cocktail lounge was added to the Empress Hotel. According to one account—on the website of another historic Chilliwack hotel—this was the start of the hotel’s decline in which it would eventually lose "its lustre" and fall into disrepair. The Alder Inn, too, saw a cocktail lounge added in 1966, although the Alder Grove Heritage Society’s history of the hotel doesn’t go into detail about what happened after.

In July 2010, the City of Chilliwack purchased the Empress Hotel for $1.3 million. Three months later it was demolished in what Chilliwack Progress editor Greg Knill called an "aggressive tack" from council to redevelop downtown Chilliwack. The city purchased neighbouring properties and consolidated the land, with a goal of developing it "when market conditions were right."

That vision is now nearing completion, with the help of the Algra Brothers. The site of the Empress Hotel is now the Empress Apartments, a series of "boutique rental suites" in Chilliwack’s redeveloped downtown and currently accepting lease applications. Surrounding properties are now home to District 1881, which houses restaurants and businesses.

Langley Township’s council is trying to do much the same thing: turn a historic, but dilapidated, property into a vibrant downtown core. But they want it to happen immediately, not 10 years from now.

The Alder Inn’s lengthy history came to an end in the summer of 2020, when the township paid $250,000 to demolish the building. The inn had closed in 2019, 70 years after its opening. It marked the end of the last Fraser Valley strip club and an establishment that had been reprimanded for questionable business practices at least once, but which was also a place that had once been a hub of the community. (As it happens, the Empress also functioned as a strip club in its final years.)

It has been almost a year since the site was demolished and 3 different development options were suggested. (These options are similar to what is currently in downtown Chilliwack: ground-level commercial space, with apartments above, and a potential for townhouses on one lot.) Now, council is bickering over what should happen with the resulting gravel lots. Should they spend $250,000 to create a public plaza while the township waits to develop? Or should they sell the land now? (If they do sell now, some councillors are determined to add a clause telling the developer a plaza needs to be built if there isn’t a shovel in the ground within 2 years.)

Council asked staff for more details on a potential public plaza and its cost. While they wait for the report, a rezoning process to prepare the land for development is being fast-tracked. But for a council eager to see something happen in Aldergrove’s downtown, the question is whether that will be fast enough.