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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
The job may have taken more time, more skills, more tools and more labour, but stonemason Gerry Lambert is proud to say that the refacing of the Roman Empire Building downtown is being done with Yellowknife rock.

Instead of using the typical cast stone ordered from the south for Northern construction jobs, stonemasons Gerry Lambert, left, and Skelly Jno Lewis of Visions Stone Works Ltd. used the abundance of Yellowknife rock to complete the face of the Roman Empire Building downtown, which is undergoing major renovations. - Simon Whitehouse/NNSL photo

An estimated 15 tonnes of colourful Yellowknife stone is part of the new skirting and main entrance of the building, which has been undergoing extensive exterior renovations for several weeks.

Pink and green quartz, basalt, river rock and granite are among the stone varieties that have been arranged to form an Inukshuk and the illusion of Northern Lights on the building.

"What I like about it is you're taking something that is basically what most people look at as a bunch of rubble, and you're making it into something beautiful," Lambert said.

Lambert's company, Visions Stone Works Ltd., from Nanoose Bay, B.C., was contracted to do the unique refacing job at the Coldwell Banker-owned building, with the request to use the Yellowknife rock as opposed to the usual manufactured stone typically ordered from down south for building.

As a result, most of the rock used for the design was hand-picked in Yellowknife, donated from the Homes North project at Lot 51 near Kam Lake.

"The whole focus is using Yellowknife rock and Yellowknife stone, to showcase what you can do with local stone and a Northern theme," said Coldwell Banker partner Rod Stirling. "You won't see anything else like it in Yellowknife.

"I think it's really creative and it'll be kind of a showpiece and I think it's nice somebody is utilizing Northern stone because we have so much of it."

The rock available in Yellowknife is "the prettiest stone," said Lambert, surprised that more building in Yellowknife is not done with local stone.

"Most people will go with what we call a cultured stone, which is a man-made stone of concrete," Lambert said. "It simulates stone but nothing that is man-made will ever be as nice as what comes right off the mountains. So, to me, it's just shocking that when I see the beautiful stone here you don't see more of it being used. There's such an abundance of it."

Even with the availability of the rock, finding the contractors with the skill and tools needed to hand-pick, chisel, dress, and install the much-heavier raw rock is more difficult than finding contractors who use the prepared cast stone which usually comes packaged in about one-inch thick slabs, Lambert said.

"With this, you do need a lot of skills and the right tools and the patience," he said.

The stonework on the Roman Empire Building was completed this week, and the rest of the exterior, including the siding, insulation and windows, is expected to be complete in the next month, Stirling said.

Previously occupied by a number of different businesses, the Roman Empire Building is targeted to be complete by December, with just one unnamed company expected to take up the whole building when the work is complete.

The building renovations were done with assistance from the city's facade and site improvement program.

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