Kalnciema Street 2b, Riga

The building on Kalnciema Street 2b was built in 1913, following the project by architect Edgar Voldemar Eduard Friezendorf. It was a six-story Art Nouveau dwelling house with a shop, offices and rental apartments. From 1935 to the end of his life in 1947 composer Professor Peter Barrison lived there.

In the 1990s, five heirs recovered the house and then sold their shares to a Parex subsidiary. Then before the crisis it was resold, but the new owner went bankrupt after the crisis. In 2010 Dekarta Property Ltd., which was owned by Russian citizen Denis Kim, won the house at auction. In order to turn the house into a "Kalnciems residence" with exclusive apartments, it was necessary to get rid of the tenants with open-ended contracts. Simple and effective methods were used – there was no contract with Riga Heat and in winter the building had no heating with all the consequences. Some of the tenants left their apartments and were replaced by the homeless, with the result that most tenants left their apartments. Some stayed and litigated... While in 2010 most of the apartments were occupied, in the fall of 2012 tenants had stayed in only four apartments.

In 2015, SIA Dekarta Property suffered a loss of EUR 2.62 million. In 2016, Vidzeme Suburb Court initiated SIA Dekarta Property insolvency case, but the Riga City Council Commission on Environmental Degrading Structures classified the building at Kalnciema Street 2b as a Category B environmentally damaging building. In September 2017, the municipality ordered the owner – SIA Dekarta Property – to immediately remedy the deficiencies, but in October, the owner of Kalnciema Street 2b became SIA K2B, a subsidiary of Estonian company Tradesman EU. On the night of November 24 to 25, 2018 at 3.38 am, an open flame erupted in a Kalnciema Street 2b house. The once magnificent and majestic Art Nouveau house, purposefully turned into a slum, burned for three days. When the fire in the building was extinguished, the Riga City Council City Property Committee stated that the building should not be demolished, but that hazardous parts should be dismantled and debris removed. The National Heritage Board has concluded that the building at Kalnciema Street 2B is an architecturally expressive Art Nouveau house with a cultural and historical value – an architectural monument of local significance. But – it came too late... The building was not on the list of nationally protected cultural monuments, and so till that time there were no obstacles to its transformation... And the transformation took place... We see this today, if we go or drive along the Raņķa Dambis past the building on Kalnciem Street 2b that is one of the evidence of our own principles, morals, values and fate...