Province needs to reverse course to protect heritage buildings
Preserving our architectural heritage has typically received short shrift – a particular problem in this region – and the situation has only devolved under the policies of the Ford government.
Among the many detrimental provisions of the sweeping Bill 23, the More Homes, Built Faster Act, is a requirement for all municipalities to move on designating buildings of interest that are currently listed on its register or properties or be forced to remove them from the register by January 1.
Given the time and resources needed for such undertakings, the province is essentially decreeing the sites of heritage value will have no protections.
While being “listed” doesn’t confer any legal status under the Ontario Heritage Act, such properties are offered some protection. Properties listed on a municipal register have interim protection from demolition. An owner of a listed property is required to give municipal council at least 60 days’ notice of their intention to demolish or remove a building or structure, which is enough time to begin the formal designation process if warranted.
In most cases, the “listed” status is sufficient for municipal purposes. There may be no need to move to “designated” status, which comes with a cost, including more stringent restrictions on the property owner.
The changes demanded by the province make for an all-or-nothing scenario that likely does more harm than good.
As with all things Bill
23, the goal is to make it easier for developers to move ahead on projects, eliminating roadblocks to more construction, cutting out such trivialities as good planning, heritage protections and neighbourhood character.
There are some 36,000 listed heritage properties in Ontario. Given the downside, it’s no surprise that heritage organizations are keen for the province to reverse course, or at least extend the deadline by another five years.
Among those calling for an extension is Architectural Conservancy Ontario, which notes only a small fraction of listed properties are in line for designation by the end of the year.
“With the expiry date now months away, municipalities have been scrambling to review their registers and prioritize properties for designation or other protection,” said ACO chair Diane Chin in a release. “But this is nearly impossible on such a tight timeline.”
Woolwich’s Heritage Committee also backs the five-year extension, with 11 properties at risk. It simply doesn’t have the resources to move any quicker, noted Coun. Bonnie Bryant. Township council last week approved a formal request for more time, in keeping with other municipalities and heritage groups.
“Affected municipalities all face the same daunting challenge
— how to review their municipal registers, prioritize properties for designation (or other protection) and then move those properties into the exacting designation stream before the time runs out. For most this is an enormous, near-impossible task,” wrote heritage consultant Dan Schneider on the blog maintained by the Heritage Resources Centre at the University of Waterloo.
“Consider: Historically almost all Ontario municipalities with heritage designation programs have individually designated only a handful, or fewer, properties a year.
“Compounding the problem is that the province has made designation more difficult by imposing new hurdles in the designation process, especially the requirement that a property must meet two of the legislated criteria for designation instead of one.”
Making it more difficult to protect heritage buildings is not the direction in which we want to be heading. It’s certainly counterproductive given all the past failings.
Ontario has plenty of intact neighbourhoods that date back to the mid-19th century. The buildings may not be as old as those found in Europe, but they could someday take on more significance. That is, of course, if we take steps to preserve and maintain them.
That’s always a big if. In this region alone, there are numerous examples of lovely old buildings knocked down due to neglect and ignorance. To be sure, some of the buildings that disappeared needed to go. Others weren’t anything special. But all too often progress for progress’ sake saw old, character-filled structures fall to make way for ugly, soulless buildings (think about Kitchener’s old city hall making way for a failed urban shopping mall). Or, perhaps even more insultingly, for a vacant, weed-filled lot.
That history is especially problematic in Kitchener and Waterloo, where the built environment is generally ugly or, at best, neutral. There are a few nice older buildings that have survived overzealous demolition – the Walper Hotel and the CIBC bank across the road in Kitchener, for instance, examples we can agree on – but there’s no real brilliant architecture, no grand mansions or other notable specimens that can be found in other places. Instead, they’re working-class cities that relied on industry. What K-W did have was lots of factories, though many of those were knocked down before we realized what those elsewhere figured out long ago: people like old buildings, and the factories of yore make great conversions into funky offices and lofts.
That kind of reuse of old buildings – factories turned lofts, old rowhouses becoming trendy restaurants – is destined to become, well, a thing of the past given the ugly, poorly built structures that have been the norm for most of the postwar period.
Older buildings, made of simple, workable materials – steel, wood, bricks and glass – can be made to last, and are much friendlier to the environment. That provides for cleaner living, the absence of the materials found in today’s sick buildings. And the structures are more durable, making them a better choice for the environment than continually demolishing and replacing them.
Like so many things today, however, archi
tecture is disposable. Look around at the newer buildings: do you really think they’ll be here in a century? As is the case with electronics, clothing and cars, for instance, the buildings are typically made on the cheap, intended to be discarded as they quickly wear out or suffer the fickleness of fashion and trendiness.
The dwindling stock of worthwhile edifices makes it especially important to rebuff the province’s efforts to remove protections from heritage buildings.