Preserving heritage buildings can be financially viable

A commitment by the company redeveloping the historic former YMCA building to go beyond its original architectural preservation plan comes at a crucial point for Peterborough.

A year ago the prospective owner of another historically and architecturally significant building across George St. from the old Y walked away from a redevelopment project.

The developer’s concerns focused partly on the cost of preserving or replicating intricate brickwork and design detail.

In the end a deal to sell the building, currently the site of the Black Horse Pub, fell apart.

The Black Horse building dates back to 1882. Its front façade was designed to tie in with the neighbouring Morrow Building, another beautifully constructed heritage building that underwent a full rehabilitation.

The Black Horse building came close to being lost when the owner was issued a demolition permit and city council decided not to give it a heritage designation after-the-fact.

A new, five-storey apartment building was approved with only a vague commitment that some original brick would be used to create a heritage reminder, perhaps in the new building’s lobby.

The demise of that project was unfortunate. It would have created new housing, jobs and investment and contributed to the reinvigoration of downtown.

And while it is not clear how much, if anything, the public campaign to save the building and the issue of architectural preservation had to do with developer’s final decision, the contrast between the Black Horse and YMCA projects is a case study the city should learn from.

The 123-year-old Y building has been saved but it was not an easy patient. It has been vacant for more than a decade. While each new owner wanted to preserve its distinctive features as part of redevelopment, good intentions were defeated by costs and concerns about a market for retail and residential space.

Toronto-based Atria Development committed early on to saving the building’s signature round, red-brick turret but planned to do away entirely with the matching five-floor 1930s wing along George St.

After consultations with the local architectural heritage committee, Atria revised its plan. The 1930s wing will come down but the brick and stone of its intricate Romanesque Revival façade will be used to create an identical front for the new building.

That is precisely the task that the Black Horse developer said was too expensive to contemplate. It’s an argument often heard when historic buildings are on the line to make way for new development.

Perhaps the difference is a matter of scale. Absorbing the cost of retaining and re-making the material of a century-old façade is more possible when folded into a redevelopment as large as the Y project.

But the equally intricate preservation of the Morrow Building at George and Brock streets suggests that’s not the case.

An interest in preservation on the part of the developer is obviously a factor. Atria has a history of similar projects, which undoubtedly leads to deeper investigation of cost-effective preservation and rehabilitation methods.

That kind of information and the financial calculations that result from it should be available to other developers and shared by groups like the architectural advisory committee.

If a broader segment of the development community accepts that heritage preservation can be financially viable as well as socially responsible there will be fewer battles and more successful projects.