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A former building on the St. Marys Paper mill site in Sault Ste. Marie is being repurposed as an event venue.
Starting next June, the 10,000-square-foot Machine Shop will be available for rent for a variety of purposes, including weddings, community activities and corporate events. Featuring sandstone walls, timbered ceilings and turn-of-the-century ironworks, the building was built in 1899 by Francis H. Clergue. It’s one of five buildings on the site that were preserved after St. Marys went into receivership in 2012. The remainder of the mill works has been torn down.
The main venue boasts more than 10,000 square feet of space, and is suited for a variety of functions, with sufficient room for a commercial kitchen, instruction area, and rehearsal and meeting space. An additional 19,000 square feet will be developed into creative office spaces, which will also be available for rent.
Developer Blueforest Ventures, a subsidiary of Riversedge Developments, is revamping the space as part of a greater reclamation project, dubbed Mill Square Properties. It features Mill Market, Entomica (bug centre), the Algoma Conservatory of Music, and Destination North, a living centre for culture, ecology and wilderness experience currently being developed by Science North and Yallowega Belanger Architecture on behalf of Riversedge Developments and the City of Sault Ste. Marie.
Restoration of the Machine Shop building is scheduled to begin shortly, with the first bookings at the space available beginning June 1, 2015.
