The Italian Club at Fifth and Dominion suffered collateral damage Tuesday morning.
The doorway was knocked off its hinges and then some, club president Luciano Pagnotta said, when a sport utility vehicle was knocked into the building during a collision with a pickup truck.
"There's substantial damage to the building, there's a lot of damage," he said in an interview about two hours after the incident, which occurred shortly before 10 a.m. "The impact came right on the corner which pushed in this whole wall and split about four two-by-sixes that hold that front door.
"And this is a heritage building, this is an old building for Prince George. It's 78 years old."
He said the damage could put in doubt a sold-out pasta night this Friday.
"I don't know what I'm going to do now," Pagnotta said. "I don't know how I'm going to do it. No front door."
However, he said the two tenants occupying the upstairs won't be affected. It was not the first time there has been a collision at the intersection and Pagnotta called the situation "horrible."
The intersection is governed by stop signs on all four corners, supported by a flashing red light to tell drivers it's a four-way stop.
Full-blown stop lights are what's required in Pagnotta's opinion.
"The stop signs they have here, they go right through them," he said. RCMP said it appears one of the drivers failed to obey a stop sign, "however, the investigation is continuing." There were no major injuries although one driver was taken to hospital as a precaution, RCMP said.
Between 2013 and 2017, there were eight crashes at the intersection, according to the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia.
