City trying to buy townhomes above library
Owners don’t want to leave, say the city should find them comparable housing
Stephen Pritchard has been in “limbo” for the last year, ever since he found out the city wants to acquire the townhomes above the Dawes Road Library.
“You’re kind of in a fog,” said Pritchard, who lives in one of the eight units with his brother. “You don’t know where you’re going to be, you don’t know where you’re going to go. It’s been tough. It’s been stressful.”
His three-storey townhome is part of a condominium corporation with a library at street-level. The Toronto Public Library says the library facility is too small for the community it serves.
The city confirmed it is in the process of acquiring the units in order to improve the Dawes Road Library and provide additional social services for the community, Natasha Hinds Fitzsimmins, a spokesperson for the city’s real estate services said.
The City of Toronto’s plan is to build a new library and community space on the existing land that will have an early literacy centre for young children and more study, work and program spaces, said Toronto Public Library communications manager Ana-Maria Critchley.
Construction will likely begin in 2018 and is expected to finish in 2020, Critchley said. There will continue to be library service to the community during the construction process “through an alternate service plan which will be developed closer to the construction start date,” she added.
But though the construction will expand services to the community, it could be leaving the townhome owners in jeopardy.
On May 5, 2016, the city said an appraisal found Stephen and his brother’s unit was worth $300,000. It
“It’s a three-storey condo. You’re not going to find that in the city.”
STEPHEN PRITCHARD TOWNHOME OWNER
offered to buy the unit for $300,000 plus a 30-per-cent premium of $90,000 if they were willing to sell it to the city.
Pritchard and his neighbours refused and hired a lawyer instead.
The city came back and offered $415,000, but Pritchard says this is not enough.
“It’s a three-storey condo. You’re not going to find that in the city,” said Pritchard, who purchased the condominium in 2011 for $245,000 with his brother.
The city said it, along with the Toronto Public Library, “is fully committed to working with the owners to arrive at a solution that is acceptable to all parties.”
Pritchard says he would be willing to move if the city can find him something equivalent to his home in To- ronto, but a local broker said his options will be limited.
Market value for the home is probably around $415,000, said Century 21 Innovative Realty broker Sabbir Chawala.
And the unit owners will have a tough time finding something comparable in the neighbourhood in that price range.
“They’d probably have to get out of the neighbourhood,” Chawala said.
“You’d have to buy a condo, that’s the only thing you’d have for $450,000, they’d have to be condos, they wouldn’t be in a townhome anymore.”
But a condo is exactly what Pritchard doesn’t want.
He and his brother bought their townhome because of the space and because it was above a library.
“I don’t want to move into some 50th storey and get a three-foot patio, I’ve got a nice garden and barbecue,” he said. “There’s nothing like this.”
The perfect outcome, said Pritchard, would to go back in time and stop this process from ever starting.
Barring that though, he said, “we just want our fair deal.”