Clock ticking on heritage properties
City not ‘weaponizing heritage designations as a way of preventing development’
The deadline affects 160 buildings on the city’s register of non-designated heritage properties — sites considered potentially significant
St. Catharines city council is joining the call on the province to delay a plan that would remove demolition protection from 36,000 listed heritage properties in Ontario if they aren’t officially designated by year’s end.
Councillors endorsed a letter by the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario asking the province to extend its deadline five years to Jan. 1, 2030, to allow municipalities like St. Catharines more time to review properties on their heritage registers.
“As ACO warned in December 2022, forcing municipalities to designate all listed properties within two years or drop them from the register was draconian and totally unrealistic,” conservancy president Diane Chin wrote in a letter to the province in February that was circulated to city council this month.
“With the expiry date now less than one year away, municipalities, large and small, are scrambling to review their registers and prioritize properties for designation or other protection.”
Port Dalhousie Coun. Carlos Garcia, who sits on the city’s heritage committee, pulled the letter at the last council meeting on March 4 saying the issue is a “major concern.”
The deadline affects 160 buildings on the city’s register of non-designated heritage properties — sites considered potentially significant that haven’t gone through timeconsuming formal heritage studies, such as the Mansion House downtown or Westminster United Church on Queenston Street.
Currently, if the owner of a property on the registry wants to demolish or remove a building, the city can pause the request for 60 days while it determines the heritage significance. The result can affect whether a demolition permit is granted.
That will change on Jan. 1, 2025, when all properties on
non-designated heritage registries will be removed and can’t be relisted for five years.
The province made the change in 2022 with an amendment to the Ontario Heritage Act under Bill 23, the More Home Built Faster Act, with the goal of fast-tracking construction of 1.5 million homes in Ontario by 2031. Prior to the change, properties could remain on the register indefinitely.
Tami Kitay, St. Catharines director of planning and building services, said it has been her experience that council and its heritage advisory committee have always approached heritage conservation “pragmatically.”
“The city is not in the practice of weaponizing heritage designations as a way of preventing development,” she said. “I understand that this may not always be the case in other jurisdictions, but it’s important to the city and its community that we protect our most important heritage assets moving forward.”
She said city staff and the committee would welcome an extension to allow a comprehensive review of the register to prioritize the right properties for designation.
Asked about the conservancy’s request while in St. Catharines on Monday for a funding announcement, Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Paul Calandra said no decision has been made.
He said he’ll be sitting down with Citizenship and Multiculturalism Minister Michael Ford to better understand any challenges municipalities are having in meeting the deadline previously set.
“At the same time, as I said, I’m pretty focused on removing obstacles that get in the way of building homes,” Calandra said at city hall.
“But look, you can’t help but come into a place like Niagara and see just how important our history and heritage is. It is not only important just to the community but, frankly, it’s an economic driver.”
A major roadblock for municipalities is the amount of time it takes to research details on individual properties for designation, which is a labour-intensive process that can take months.
In St. Catharines, the city has one heritage planner. There’s also a heritage committee made up of volunteers.
In April 2023, council ordered a study on the creation of a downtown heritage district, which if enacted would protect about 100 of the properties all at once.
City heritage planner James Neilson said consultants started work on the study in January and the hope is they’ll have a report to council in the summer with a recommendation. If council goes ahead with a district, guidelines and policies would then have to be developed and approved by council.
It’s not known if that can get done before the end of the year.
Neilson said the other 60 properties were prioritized late last year with a heritage subcommittee and divvied up for research. How many properties it can get done by the end of the year will depend on how much digging is required.
“It’s really about what we find about these properties and then how much work is required to be able to flush out the full story. So if we got 10 to 12 done, that would be fantastic.”