Heritage advocates make pitch to save foundry

CAMBRIDGE — Heritage advocates urged politicians to save a former foundry from demolition to make way for the proposed Gaslight District project.

Cambridge residents filled council chambers on Tuesday night as the planning and development committee deliberated the proposal that will include two residential towers plus retail and commercial space.

Hip Developments wants to demolish parts of the former industrial site, a move that worries heritage advocates.

“The significance of the complex is determined by the relationship of the structures within the whole,” Karen Scott Booth, of the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario’s Cambridge branch, told the committee.

The Gaslight District project has been controversial since it was first proposed last year. Hip wants to build two 20-storey towers, twice the allowed height in the area.

Height and heritage have been the two sticking points for the project proposed on the west side of the Grand River.

City planner Elaine Brunn Shaw said staff ’s report recommending approval of the project addressed concerns about scale, height and loss of heritage.

She cited a 15-storey apartment building on Concession Street and a 14-storey building on Cambridge Street, both close to the same height as the proposed 20-storey Gaslight towers.

This is because the elevation at the Hip site is a bit lower, added Brunn Shaw.

Hip wants to demolish parts of a building that faces the Dunfield Theatre, to make room for one of the residential towers, and access points to the proposed public square inside the complex. A staff report says 75 per cent of the complex will be retained and then the buildings will be designated as heritage structures — because they currently are not.

Heritage advocates disagreed with this plan.

“The 75 per cent figure is very misleading. It measures the square footage of two floors. Only 40 per cent of the footprint is to be retained,” Scott Booth said.

Stone buildings that date back to between 1860 and 1910 have been home to the Southworks Outlet Mall for 20 years. The foundry once manufactured engines, boilers, fireproof safes and vaults.

Scott Higgins, president of Hip Developments, said the project will revitalize the downtown core by attracting residents, visitors and businesses alike.

Many of the dozen residents who spoke to the committee on Tuesday felt the same way.

“I have a passion for what Cambridge can become,” local resident Darren Drouillard said. “What we need is the ‘wow’ factor,” he said of the Gaslight District project.

Others did not agree. Resident Amanda Hooykaas told the committee that Cambridge has an inferiority complex with its need to overcompensate by approving big projects.

“It reminds me of a lost teenager who will run to anyone that pays attention to them.”

She said the loss of heritage assets downtown would be a “tragic mistake.”

Cambridge politicians did not make a decision on the proposal by press time.