Oh ho ho ! Heritage Impact Assessments are about convincing the city that the changes made to the existing buildings on site are acceptable; not necessarily about making an impartial assessment of the existing building on site. As crucial as the work of heritage consultants like ERA is, I've also seen them reluctantly dismiss some obvious heritage elements in some of their other HIA reports, often in some terse, pained statements. Nevertheless, preservation die had already been cast long ago by the developers.
If your developer wants to save a building, like at 2 Tecumseth (which itself is trashy in its current state), then great, lengthy arguments can be made about the 'value of conserving fabric', the 'social context of the site', etc. etc. The new development will also be adapted to fit its context from the start, serious efforts will be made to conserve the fabric, or some real architectural continuity to the lost buildings will be maintained (not some interpretative "sidewalk marker" seen here that will be destroyed within 5 years, either by winter or by Toronto Public Works).
If your developer wants a clean slate, then the buildings on site are somehow always 'unremarkable', or in 'poor condition' and thus never worth preserving, not even in spirit.
Anyways, it would be a good time to start talking to the BIAs and local heritage groups, if you want these buildings to be preserved.
(It's also a shame that Woodcliffe has seemingly done a 180 on their preservation values since the passing of Paul Oberman, with many of their more recent projects seemingly more monolithic and less contextual? I wonder what prompted this shift?)
