Former Dartmouth City Hall soon to receive the spa treatment

A familiar bureaucratic building on the Dartmouth waterfront will be getting a bit of a Nordic facelift.

The main floor of the former Dartmouth City Hall building will soon house an elaborate Nordic spa, complete with infrared saunas and a movement studio, after sitting empty for at least six years.

Currently located on nearby Portland Street, The Nature Folk Wellness Studio is planning to expand into the new location as early as April and the spa’s proprietors couldn’t be more thrilled to be the storied structure’s newest occupants.

“We are super excited,” says co-owner Ashley Cluett, who opened the Portland Street business just prior to the pandemic. “We survived a couple lockdowns and for two years the business has been expanding, so it feels definitely surreal.”

Cluett, along with Anna Tremblay, opened the Nature Folk Wellness Studio in 2019 after the pair came up with the idea while working at a restaurant together.  Cluett moved to Vancouver for school but soon after returning, Tremblay reintroduced the idea of creating a Nordic spa in Dartmouth.

“Basically, it took a year to write the business plan and get the funding. We knew we were going to start small,” admits Cluett. “(But) we hoped to expand — that was always in the back of our mind. We just wanted to see if it was going to work in this setting.”

Having proven their business model could work in HRM, Cluett and Tremblay decided to bring on Kristen Morse to run the studio side of the business.

Serendipity soon stepped in and the opportunity to move into the former Dartmouth City Hall building on Alderney Drive came up.

“We started to look through spaces and we went to a lot of new construction spaces and they looked great — probably a lot easier in the end — but I had always admired the city hall building, I thought it was so cool,” says Cluett, noting that the location near Alderney Landing was particularly appealing. “The way it connects to the city via the ferry is just something we thought would be extraordinary.”

Constructed in the 1960s, the waterfront building was the site of the former City of Dartmouth (before amalgamation into the Halifax Regional Municipality in 1996). It was also later used to house the offices of the Halifax School Board before being put up for sale.

The building has undergone several prospective buyers since that time. At one point, there was even a plan forwarded to turn the building into a municipal museum.

In 2017, the property was purchased from the Halifax Regional Municipality by Starfish Properties.

“We wanted to really keep a lot of the original architecture,” insists Cluett, who has hired local architects Hewn + Barter to design the new wellness spa. “We want to keep as many original details as possible so you’ll still see a lot of concrete, the columns will remain and the kind of roughness of the space will be there, but it will be obviously upscaled with beautiful, custom millwork and beautiful woods and materials, and there will be a softness in the features that we choose.”

With hopes of opening in the spring, the expansion will also increase the Nature Folk Wellness Studio from its current size of 2,000 square feet as well as expand their number of services.

“The new space will be just under 5,000 square feet. It will have four private infrared sauna rooms, three massage therapy rooms, a traditional Nordic circuit — so two traditional saunas flanking a cold plunge pool and hot mineral bath,” says Cluett, adding the expansion includes the addition of a 700 square foot movement studio. “(It’s) going to have yoga, Pilates (and) it’s going to be available for renting for events and that sort of thing.”

While the future of the property has been a much talked about topic of debate, Cluett insists that reception of their move into 90 Alderney Drive has been largely welcoming since it was announced.

“People are very excited which is amazing,” says Cluett. “I was a little worried that we might get some (criticism) from people saying, ‘oh, I think it should have been this,’ but so far, so good — everyone is excited!”