By Pepper Parr
June 18th, 2023
BURLINGTON, ON
Heritage homes have been an issue in Burlington for at least two decades.
The Real Estate industry seem, at times, to be doing everything they can to convince their clients to do everything they can to prevent a property from being put on a Registry.
The sell everyone short with this kind of behaviour and unfortunately the city has yet to see the kind of leadership from the Real Estate community that could show the upside to there being a significant number of homes that are deemed significant from a Heritage perspective.
Some feel that battle was lost when former Mayor “Rob” MacIsaac ticked off a lot of people with his approach. “The city as learned a lesson” said one of the residents that lives in a house that is part of the study group; “they aren’t going to get caught like that again.
The city is currently trying to carve out parts of the city that have significance from a heritage perspective.
Two and perhaps thee members of the current city council are strong property rights people who believe a property owner should be able to decide on their own if their property has heritage value.
In a recent council decision related to a property on Locust Avenue where the owner wanted to make some renovations and additions to a property they had purchased that would allow the extended family to live in the house they had purchased.
In a separate article the Gazette will take you through a rather disappointing resolution on the part of the city on that Locust Street property.
At the moment the city is in the process of having studies completed on what they refer to as “clusters” of properties in the downtown core.
Parts of the downtown core that are the subject of Heritage Studies
The Heritage Planner is holding private meetings with groups of people to discuss the options.
One resident sees the structure of the meetings is as a “divide and conquer” tactic because “they don’t want people to get together and organize against what the city is trying to do” was the way one resident put it.
On Monday John O’Reilly, the Heritage Planner, will be meeting with residents from the Foot of Brant Street; Village Square and Downtown East communities; later in the month – June 21st – he will meet with residents from Locust Street; and Burlington Avenue and Lakeshore Road.
Media are not permitted to attend.
The city would like to see the facade of this 1830’s house built into the tower, shown on the left, that the developer wants to build. The house is the last structure of its kind left on Brant Street.
The current city Council is doing everything it can to retain at least some of the city heritage. There is just one building on Brant Street standing that was built in the 1830’s – the city would settle for keeping just the facade and have it built into the proposed 29 storey structure. The developer refuses to meet with the Heritage planners and has taken his case to the Ontario Land Tribunal.
There are small, very small collections of houses that are thought to have some heritage potential and efforts are being made to produce studies that will support what the city is trying to do.
There isn’t much a city can do – they can refuse to issue building or demolition permits but those refusals don’t last forever.
There doesn’t yet appear to be all that much demand for retaining houses with what planners see as significant heritage value.
Those who want heritage to be part of the city culture are not the people who own the houses.
As one resident put it – “the city wants to create streetscapes that will allow people to walk or drive by and comment on how nice the neighbourhood looks – we want to be the ones who determine what our homes look like.”
I am a former owner of what is now a heritage property on Locust St. There are several things to consider. The building is in very poor condition and by almost any standard is a ‘tear down’. Otherwise it would need hundreds of thousands of dollars in restoration.
The property tax on the 2800 sq ft building on a 70 ft lot is $34,000 ($43,000 prior to a recent appeal to MPAC). There is no achievable rent on 2800 sq ft which could cover the cost of ownership.
From Caroline to the Lakeshore, Locust St already has 3 parking lots, the municipal parking garage, 3 tall buildings (including city Hall),the performing arts centre and a plastic surgery centre. In that same stretch there are 7 buildings and a church that could in any way be considered historic. Two of them are in a severe state of disrepair.
The opportunity to preserve Locust St as a historic area (as designated in our current official plan) was lost many years ago.
“We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us,” . So said Sir Winston Churchill in his speech to the meeting in the House of Lords, October 28, 1943. He was requesting that the House of Commons, bombed out in May 1941, be rebuilt exactly as before.
What Burlington was and has become should be capable of being traced in a meaningful collection of.representative heritage buildings, spanning several generations. Unfortunately, this often pits the very legitimate interests of historic preservation against the property rights of individual home owners. I believe that this Council has a very large challenge trying to balance these competing interests all in the face of intensification of the downtown core and provincial targets for new housing. It is unlikely that any municipality has faced this exact set of issues to the degree and in the dimension that Burlington does now. However, there is opportunity here.
I think that it would be a mistake to ignore all the expertise, talent and experience available. Reach out to kindred municipalities, conscript residents who currently live in designated homes or have dealt with heritage issues, engage developers and new home builders; people like David Barker and Albert Facenda come to mind. Use all appropriate resources to develop a strategy that is as equitable and balanced as possible and provides a serviceable blueprint for the next decade. There will always be trade-offs but if Council can reach a more common endorsement of the approach to heritage preservation then it will be an achievement that is also a legacy.
Clearly the City do not want affected property owners to meet or organize. Lesson learned from their last failed attempt to impose a blanket heritage district on hundreds of property owners under then Mayor Rob McIsaac. They appear to be using the heritage district by stealth method, using a fragmented piecemeal approach. The most obvious centre of such a heritage district, Brant Street, is beyond saving (compare to Dundas downtown shopping district, or Collingwood) so once again they turn their attention to surrounding streets & decide to download all the responsibility to individual property owners. Only in Bizarro Burlington do they hold meetings directly across from the 23 storey Gallery Condos & Lofts where suites are priced from $1,995,000 to $2,195,000. Stable door & bolting horses comes to mind. I wonder what the owners of the assembled properties at the foot of Brant Street (old Royal Bank building etc) think of this new assault method? As I can’t attend *that* meeting perhaps you’ll report on it?