Somerset House in sorry state
Frustrated councillor says we’re seeing ‘demolition by neglect’
Nine years after Somerset House started falling down it is still falling down and its owner wants to tear more of it down before it collapses on its own.
This is 2½ years after city hall approved a major restoration plan for the rickety heritage building at Bank Street and Somerset Street West. It’s exactly a year since owner Tony Shahrasebi said he expected the job would be done and Somerset House ready to occupy again in, er, one year.
The oldest part of Somerset House was once a hotel and tavern; it dates to 1902. It has a slightly newer section built onto it along Somerset Street, which has been mostly demolished for years — what’s left is a facade braced with a web of girders. Under the approved restoration plan, a modern new building is supposed to be constructed behind that facade, capped with a glassed-in top storey that would match the height of the original hotel.
According to engineering plans filed with the city now, that facade’s got to be “demolished and completely removed.” Plus the demolition has to eat into the older section of Somerset House, potentially taking out as much as a quarter of the facade toward Bank. That building is constructed in four sections and the one closest to the write-off newer part might not be salvageable. The foundation of the older building also needs reinforcing, the plans say.
Supposedly Somerset House has become such a menace that this can’t wait until regular business resumes in August. The city’s schedule is to have its heritage committee deal with the application July 11, its planning committee vote July 12 and city council give final approval July 13 — right before a long summer break when committees and council don’t meet for weeks.
“This is, to me, a prime example of demolition by neglect,” said Coun. Catherine McKenney, who represents Somerset ward. “Allowing a building with heritage status in a heritage conservation district to slowly deteriorate to the point where it becomes a safety risk. We start to see applications for demolition. I believe that the owner has got a responsibility to the community, to the neighbourhood, to keep that building in a state that maintains its heritage qualities and its uses.”
McKenney disapproves but hasn’t yet decided whether she can do anything to stand in the way.
Shahrasebi was away for the long weekend on Thursday and completely unreachable, said a worker at the Catherine Street car wash that’s his frequent base of operations.
Shahrasebi, through his company TKS Holdings, owns several downtown properties and has successfully restored others — a house converted into offices right next to Somerset House, a downtown gas station turned into a (sadly defunct) burger joint. But Somerset House has been a gong show, beginning when a worker on an earlier renovation project knocked out a structural support with a piece of heavy equipment in fall 2007.
Fears that the whole building could collapse closed the intersection of Bank and Somerset for months. The city and Shahrasebi fought in court over whose fault that was, who would pay for it, and even whether the building had to be demolished as a public hazard (the city’s position at the time) or was sound enough that Shahrasebi could try to save it.
If the whole thing were a plot to tear Somerset House down, as McKenney alleges, Shahrasebi had a golden chance back then. He went to court to keep the city from forcing him to do it. But it has been nine years.
He and the city eventually reached a deal on the costs, which included the city’s giving up on collecting $43,000 in “encroachment fees” for the sidewalk taken up by the braces on the newer facade.
Then in 2014, with no visible activity on the site, the city started demanding them again.
The city can’t make a property owner do anything with a building other than make sure it’s safe. Which is as it should be: a city government that could penalize you for inaction while also having a lot of veto power over any particular plan would be very dangerous.
Nor does it pay the owners of important buildings to keep them up.
In this case, if the city approves the partial demolition and the girders come down, that probably clears the sidewalk. The encroachment fees stop mounting.
Expect this gong to keep ringing for a long while yet.