Scott Creighton dusts off the back of an aged panel from the original ‘Gooderham Garage and Livery’ sign that now hangs from the second-floor balcony of the old Barr General Store in the hamlet’s downtown on a sleepy fall Friday morning, pointing out a key error in its design.
“Whoever made it actually misspelt Gooderham,” Creighton said, with the sign not containing an H. “But they caught the mistake before putting it up, so it looks like they turned it around and redid it.”
The hub at 1023 Gooderham St. has been given a new lease on life by Creighton, his wife Susan Browne, and business partner Chris Burker, who have spent a decade refurbishing the building with 129 years of history.
Peter Barr established a general store in the community around 1873, moving into this space in 1896. As more people settled in the area, drawn by work on the rail line and at nearby sawmills, the store expanded its services. Creighton said it once had a gas station and doubled as both a furniture store and funeral parlour.
“It kind of did a little bit of everything. It’s one of the original buildings in town,” said a recently-retired Creighton, who sold off his mechanical contracting business in Toronto last year to move to Gooderham full-time. He and Browne have been cottaging on Contau Lake for 20 years. Before that, Creighton owned land on Pine Lake.
He’s been a regular at the Corduroy Enduro races, held every fall, for years. Knowing this is the place he wanted to retire to, Creighton said he took a leap of faith in 2015 when taking the building on. Since then, the partners have invested about $300,000 and spent thousands of hours fixing it up.
The original stone foundation was cleaned up, with new steel supports installed to strengthen it; the interior was completely gutted, with new plumbing, electrical features, walls and furnishings. The main level now houses a commercial space Creighton is hoping to lease out and one potential residential unit, with two more apartments upstairs.
He said the project had been a real labour of love.
“The easiest thing for us to do would have been to knock it down, but then we would have lost all of the heritage and history,” Creighton said. “We kept the look of the old store as best we could. I found lots of old photos. We wanted to restore it so that it can become a central point of this community again.
“I just felt like the town needed a spark. This was an eyesore for a lot of years. We wanted to do our part to beautify the town… hopefully this is the first step, maybe others will catch on, and we can modify the town and get it back to where it was. This was a booming place back in the day,” he added.
Asked what type of commercial tenant he hopes to attract, Creighton said a coffee store or café would be a great fit for Gooderham’s downtown.
“That was the original plan when we bought the place 10 years ago – I’d fix it, and Susan and I would run a coffee shop with a biker theme. Being right at the interaction of CR 503 and CR 507, there’s opportunity here,” Creighton said. “I just want to see something come in that adds to the community… there are so many things this town needs.”
Creighton said he, Browne and Burker intend to be largely hands-off now after putting in 10 years of work.
“It feels good to do something for this community, but this place has been a bit of a money pit for 10 years. It’s finished now, there’s a bit of a legacy there, but it’ll be real nice to get some new tenants in and see this become everything we hope it can be,” he said.
