The City of Toronto’s blanket listing of 258 properties on the heritage register and plans to list up to 1,000 more in “batches” is raising alarm bells within the construction and property development sector.
The city passed the listings under Section V of the Ontario Heritage Act (OHA) in late 2017, sending ripples of shock through the development and property sector.
It coincided with Oakville’s use of the OHA to declare Glen Abbey golf course a heritage landscape after the owners fought for two years to get a demolition permit to redevelop the site into housing.
Now owners and groups like the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) are scrambling to find a way to bring what they say is badly needed process and consultation into the equation, adding they were “taken by surprise.”
Currently, more residents are going to the Toronto Preservation Board (TPB) asking their neighbourhood undergo cultural assessment studies with a view to heritage listing.
At the heart of this fight is the desire to preserve “main street properties.” The TPB says those smaller, older structures are essential to the streetscape and culture of Toronto and should be protected.
There are currently more than 1,200 buildings under the TPB microscope that could be heritage listed.
There are two types of heritage classifications, a designation in which a specific building or location is placed on the municipal heritage register under the OHA, and a non-designated listing that marks the building as being of cultural value or interest for the purposes of planning. Listing a building also freezes any demolition permit application and forces a review, the city states.
It was the 2015 overnight demolition of the Stollery building at Yonge and Bloor that kicked off an intensified process to list buildings.
While the structure wasn’t really a prime heritage example, it had some art deco redeeming qualities, stated enthusiasts at the time. However, the owner applied for and was issued a demolition permit on a Friday. Work began that night and was completed by Monday, preventing any attempt to stall or force changes or preservation.
We do not believe this is a reasonable solution
— Danielle Chin
BILD
Similarly, in 2017, north Toronto residents were dismayed to find a 110-year-old Bank of Montreal building on Yonge Street was also demolished overnight despite discussion about having it heritage listed.
As a result, the city adopted a policy of conducting heritage surveys in areas of high growth or where there is high growth potential as a step towards a citywide heritage program. There are already more than 12,000 properties on the Toronto register either individually or as part of a district.
Listing does not always lead to designation. The latter step happens as soon as the owner files for a demolition permit which prompts a review.
Heritage listings further complicate the process, adding more red tape and uncertainty, which groups like BILD say will have an economic impact, further squeezing the land supply and driving up costs.
In a letter to Toronto City Council, Danielle Chin, a senior manager of policy and government relations at BILD, says the sheer scope of this city’s use of the OHA is a red flag.
“We are deeply perplexed as to why the listed properties in the midtown in focus area were made a priority over the historic backlog of properties,” she wrote, calling it an “overly aggressive approach to batch list properties,” especially as a blanket approach. “We do not believe this is a reasonable solution.”
Michael McClelland, a principal at ERA architects, was also surprised at the shotgun approach.
At the Aug. 24, 2017 TPB meeting, he pleaded unsuccessfully for the city to step back and consult with owners, noting many of the properties being listed weren’t necessarily unique or worthy of preservation.
Heritage architect Catherine Nasmith says the city’s approach is not a bad thing because preserving the main street is integral to Toronto’s culture.
“I give a presentation in which I compare main street to old growth forests using analogies from the environmental, conservation and ecology movements to describe the value of our rapidly disappearing main streets,” says Nasmith.
“The key role main street plays in the fabric of a city is dreadfully under represented in the planning system. Just saying put lots of housing and retail on main street and everything will be hunky dory, but it doesn’t work like that. What makes main street fly is the fine-grained ownership, lots of small buildings, some with architectural significance, some not.”
It’s the way the structures interact architecturally and as part of the social and local economy that is important, she says.
People are more familiar with the notion of protecting a building because it has unique architectural design or craftsmanship, because of who lived there or what happened there, she says.
“That’s a valid approach but there are other values too,” she says. “When you apply more of a cultural landscape or heritage conservation district lens, you start to see how these properties behave and look together, how they work together.”
As to the oft-floated argument that Toronto especially needs density to support subways and transit expansion, Nasmith is dismissive.
“Transit is already over capacity,” she says, adding the provincial policy of intensification is inflationary in itself and drives up costs for small businesses.
“You’ve got taxes based on what the land is worth if there was density, not what it is now. There may have been some validity to that 20 years ago. Cities are more than just condos, houses, indiscriminate retail. Scale really matters to define a city for generations.”
As a result, the cliche resulting from the current policy of just preserving the first 20 or 30 feet of a main street structure results in what her husband, landscape architect, planner and architect Robert Allsopp, a partner at DTAH, has tabbed “urban taxidermy.” He also serves on the TPB advising the city on heritage designations.
“Urban Taxidermy describes places that look real but aren’t,” she says.
Recent Comments
comments for this post are closed