by Janet Smellie
Northern News Services

NNSL (June 11/97) - If you were thinking of visiting what was once Old Town's most popular drinking hole again this summer, forget it.

Dave Metcalfe, owner of the building that once housed the Old Town Pub, says after "five businesses going broke on the property, enough is enough."

Metcalfe bought the 51-year-old former Canadian Pacific Airlines live-in float base in 1988, at a time when city officials wanted the building torn down to make way for a major thoroughfare.

After two years of battling with city staff, council agreed to turn the building into a heritage site. Metcalfe then leased the building to Venture Air, a company that later went broke after the owner died.

After another unsuccessful airline lease failed to make money, Metcalfe leased the building to Victor McIntosh, who set up the Arctic Brewing Company, the first brewery north of 60.

But McIntosh, who ran the business with the backing of 25 investors, including former mayor Pat McMahon and city business giant Tony Chang, failed to make money on the property and the brewery headed for receivership.

It was a bankruptcy that Metcalfe charges "almost destroyed the building in the process."

"It was awful. They cut out walls trying to get the tanks out to sell them. After removing the heating system, to make way for the equipment, everything froze," leaving behind $10,000 in damages, Metcalfe says. "How anyone could treat a heritage building like this was beyond me."

Tony Chang, one of the prime investors in the brewery, says the person in charge until the brewery's last day was Victor McIntosh. Even though he and the other shareholders continued to pump money into the business, McIntosh continued to "assume more and more debt," until going bankrupt was the only way out.

"There was a series of problems, employee thefts ... the quality of the beer wasn't very good. Things were happening that we couldn't control," Chang says, adding that "people don't go out of business because they want to. I feel for Dave. He's had a rough go."

Victor McIntosh has since left Yellowknife and couldn't be reached for comment.

Metcalfe, who says he learned through an experience with a former tenant that suing a bankrupt company doesn't pay off, didn't bother trying to recover any of the costs to repair the damage he claims was done to his building.

He adds that if wasn't for former alderman John Dalton getting involved, the entire building would have been destroyed.

"John Dalton came in and stopped the brewery's crew, who were going to take out a main bearing wall, which would have collapsed the whole building. It was a sad state of affairs."

Dalton later leased the building himself, renovated it and reopened it as the Old Town Pub.

While the pub made lots of money during the two summers of its operations, the nine long months of winter just didn't pay off.

"He (Dalton) was the best renter I've ever had. We agreed to dissolve the lease, and he left the building immaculate, which I credit to him and his manager, Jim Garland. If Jim, with his bar experience, couldn't make a go of it during the winter, then nobody could."

Metcalfe, who's since had the property re-assessed as residential, is now in the process of moving himself, his wife and five children into the building, from where he'll run his insurance business.

He's also planning to lease the parking lot, worth about $400,000, to a local airline.

"I can foresee us opening it up in the future as maybe a bed and breakfast, or a coffee shop, but for now, "no way!" he insists. "We've got to make up for what we've lost."