How important properties end up vacant for years
Having protected an old gas station on Richmond Road from demolition by giving it a heritage designation, city council will probably also stop the building from being converted into a drive-thru.
To make anything great of this prominent piece of property will cost money, and the combination of city rules and heritage restrictions makes most things that might make that money back practically impossible. Toronto developer Main and Main bought the land at Richmond and Island Park Drive a couple of years ago. It is zoned for four-storey buildings already and might have been rezoned pretty easily for twice that.
“That’s a very attractive corner that deserves worthy, high-end development,” says Barrhaven Coun. Jan Harder, who chairs city council’s planning committee.
The problem: It already has something on it. A 1930s gas station, one of the first in Ottawa, from just after gasoline stopped being something you bought from a store and carried off with you in a big can. Part of the Trudeau family’s auto-service empire, once upon a time.
Last summer, Harder’s planning committee and then city council voted to give the old gas station a heritage designation. The building can be renovated or even moved, but it has to be kept basically intact. A build- ing doesn’t have to be pretty to be historically important, but it’s nice if it is. And this one is as adorable as a gas station can be. With a red pitched roof and little chimney stacks, this is what a gas station would look like if it were run by hobbits. It is one of just a couple of buildings like it left in town.
Main and Main’s new proposal is to keep the building, put on an addition (they got an awardwinning heritage architect to do the designs), and operate it as a restaurant. It would have a patio and bike racks, but also a drivethru window.
Its spot on its lot, tucked away in a back corner and surrounded by asphalt, doesn’t meet modern standards, which put buildings up against sidewalks so pedestrians don’t have to cross parking lots just to go inside. That’s one feature of a “traditional main street” like Richmond, and something encouraged by the city’s design standards.
Those standards also forbid drive-throughs. The idea is that a main street is a place where you walk and the more cars that cross the sidewalk, the less pleasant walking will be. Traffic on the street is also a concern, but not the main one.
With only five parking spots in the plans, many times more customers are expected to pull up to a window than walk up to a counter, especially at busy times. The developer’s documents figure there’ll be 250 sidewalk crossings — half coming in, half going out — in the busiest morning hour alone. More than four a minute, and both Island Park and Richmond are busy then, so don’t expect those crossings to be smooth. There’ll be lots of cars stuck across the sidewalk while pedestrians wind around them.
Main and Main’s application argues that Richmond Road isn’t really a main street, at least not there. “There are no contiguous storefronts at the corner of Richmond Road and Island Park, and there is no on-street parking for a block in either direction from this site,” the developer’s paperwork says. “The essential condition at this corner is that of an intersection of two arterial streets.”
There are car lots and gas stations nearby, including next door and across the street. “With respect to the policy goal of preserving the character of Traditional Mainstreets, none of the purported character is here to preserve,” the application says. A restaurant, even with a drivethru window, is closer to what the city supposedly wants than an actual gas station, right? Moving it toward the street would churn up contaminated soil and be expensive.
In short, this is an exceptional case.
Ha ha, no, says Harder. The odds that the city will approve a drive-thru are “slim to nil.” (The city’s planners say they’ll give the proposal all the consideration it’s due and diplomatically stop there.) Harder says she’s keen to work with Main and Main to sort out a plan that works.
The city has given itself — not to mention Main and Main — a big challenge. This is how important properties end up sitting vacant and fenced off for years.