Dome needs home: Town wants “art house” removed

SEAN McKIBBON
Nunatsiaq News

IQALUIT — The Town of Iqaluit has levelled a stop-work order at an Iqaluit man who decided to build a wooden dome near the Telesat satellite dish site in Iqaluit.

With a beautiful view of the Sylvia Grinnell River, the enigmatic structure seems to have been built in the perfect spot.

The only problem is that Randy Perkison didn’t have a building permit when he constructed it, says Iqaluit’s development officer Matthew Hough.

Or a lease.

“It’s beautiful,” Hough raved, describing the igloo-like structure. Fashioned from pieces of two-by-four lumber that Hough said were scavenged from the Town’s dump, the structure is about 17 feet in diameter and about the same height. He said he suspects that it had been there for only a month or so.

But according to the Hough, without a lease and development permit, Perkison isn’t allowed to have his building there. Hough said he talked to Perkison about the building, and told him the Town expected him to remove it.

“He indicated to me he intended it to be a project for himself. It was art. It is art,” said Hough, who mused that the building was so well fashioned that someone in Iqaluit is bound to want Perkison to move the dome to their property.

“I never thought that the first stop work order I’d ask for from the town would be on an artist,” Hough said glumly.

Perkison could not be contacted before press-time. The stop work order gives Perkison a deadline of Sept. 25 to remove the structure.