Members of the Flour Mill neighbourhood in Greater Sudbury want to give the area's iconic yellow silos a makeover so they can properly celebrate the landmark's 111th anniversary next year.

"We celebrated in 2011 the 100th anniversary of the silos," said Claude Charbonneau, chair of the Flour Mill Community Action Network (CAN).

Before the landmark's 111th anniversary is marked, the Notre Dame Avenue structures need some repairs. The large silos need to be parged because flakes of cement are coming off the top.

Charbonneau said years of neglect have left the silos in worse shape than some other well-known landmarks in the northern Ontario city, such as the Big Nickel.

"If you look at those other landmarks around the city, if we had the same money invested in them, what exactly would they look like? With the silos, nothing has evolved," he said.

"We need the silos to be in better shape so that we can have a celebration around it."

In addition to repairs, which Charbonneau guesses could cost at least $50,000, there are plans to add lighting to mark the anniversary.

The Flour Mill CAN and the Flour Mill Business Improvement Association (BIA) are working with Science North on the lighting, as they would like to project images on the sides of the silos.

During a recent meeting, Sudbury council asked city staff to draw up a business case to be included in the 2022 budget that would address the site cleanup work and lighting for the structures.

Sudbury's Ward 12 Joscelyne Landry-Altmann said the city explored a complete retrofit of the silos in 2011, when they celebrated the 100th anniversary. But the $1.5-million cost proved to be prohibitive. The city was not able to obtain a grant for the retrofits at that time.

Landry-Atlmann said she hopes the request for a lighting display will be more feasible. 

"Speaking on behalf of the community, this is a very heartfelt project," she said. "This is a community project. It's a community pride project which is very important to the community. So we're hoping for the support of council when the budget comes around."

The six silos were built in 1911 by the Ontario and Manitoba Flour Mill Company, and stood next  to a seven-storey brick flour mill building.

The mill was demolished in 1920 due to the company's demise in 1917. It faced strong competition from milling companies in Thunder Bay at the time. There was a push to demolish the silos in the 1950s, but the project proved to be too expensive. 

In the 1970s, the community pushed to preserve the silos as heritage landmarks, and the city later purchased the large concrete cylinders.

With files from Angela Gemmill

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