Even with additonal legislation and incentives, the biggest hurdle is Toronto's lack of a "culture of preservation".

NYC's really began after the loss of Penn Station. In Chicago, you can ask a resident about their neighbourhood, and they take pride in telling you about its history. Quebec certainly has it, Toronto doesn't.

Tewder outlined it beautifully - if we can't get the citizentry onboard, no wonder we continue to lose buildings.
 
Tewder said:
Interesting article and I think it highlights some of the things you and I have discussed back and forth.
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I thought that same thing when I read it :)

I walked by on my way home tonight after spending the day in emergency at St. Mikes (ick!) and the building is mostly down now. Only parts of main floor retail remain along Yonge and some of the second floor by HMV. Depending on how the investigation is going, I'd expect the rest to be gone by Tuesday or Wednesday.
 
Rebecca - HT said:
Even with additonal legislation and incentives, the biggest hurdle is Toronto's lack of a "culture of preservation".

NYC's really began after the loss of Penn Station. In Chicago, you can ask a resident about their neighbourhood, and they take pride in telling you about its history. Quebec certainly has it, Toronto doesn't.

Tewder outlined it beautifully - if we can't get the citizentry onboard, no wonder we continue to lose buildings.
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The citizenry are definitely onboard, now get the developers and Richmond Hill families onboard. Get City Hall to grow a spine. Torontonians care. If they didn't Eric Arthur would have been right about Osgoode Hall being the last 19th century building by the 21st century. Ask a resident of the Junction or Cabbagetown about their neighbourhood's history and they'll take pride in telling you about it. What can Torontonians do against neglectful property owners and indifferent bureaucrats?
 
The citizenry are definitely onboard, now get the developers and Richmond Hill families onboard. Get City Hall to grow a spine. Torontonians care. If they didn't Eric Arthur would have been right about Osgoode Hall being the last 19th century building by the 21st century. Ask a resident of the Junction or Cabbagetown about their neighbourhood's history and they'll take pride in telling you about it. What can Torontonians do against neglectful property owners and indifferent bureaucrats?
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The heritage community, who I work with, do the lion's share of the work on behalf many citizens who have shown no interest in their history. You're right those people exist - I work with them - and they are small but effective. But we are preaching to the choir here, especially on this site - we need to be concerned about engaging a new generation of heritage advocates.

And just like the small heritage community there are a few great developers who are interested in new uses for our heritage buildings, and not necessarily about profit. The majority need incentives to preserve.

The indifference of our politicians is part of the "culture of preservation" that we lack. This week, people lamented the loss of the Empress Hotel. But when they forget, they move on. The small heritage community is always pushing for preservation, but where are Torontonians otherwise? If they were more vocal, the politicians would respond more favourably.
 
junctionist said:
The citizenry are definitely onboard, now get the developers and Richmond Hill families onboard. Get City Hall to grow a spine. Torontonians care. If they didn't Eric Arthur would have been right about Osgoode Hall being the last 19th century building by the 21st century. Ask a resident of the Junction or Cabbagetown about their neighbourhood's history and they'll take pride in telling you about it. What can Torontonians do against neglectful property owners and indifferent bureaucrats?
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The bureaucrats aren't indifferent. The problem is that the heritage department is chronically understaffed and has been for years. It has only 12 people. Not much is going to change until the department is given the resources to do its job properly.
 
I don't get the sense at all that Torontonians are any less concerned about heritage issues than New Yorkers or Angelenos. It seems to me we don't have a heritage department that has been given enough resources to create a proper inventory, nor the teeth to enforce policies that are ignored by delinquent property owners. What happens in Los Angeles when owners/developers ignore warnings form the city? Do the police show up? Do they forfeit the right to own a heritage property and are they heavily fined...?

If it's not enforced then it's basically a de facto consent for the owner to make other plans for the building- afterall it is their property.
 
With no access to it's loading dock, 10 Dundas East is now taking deliveries directly through the Dundas street entrance. The right eastbound lane of Dundas Street is pretty much permanently blocked with Sysco trucks now. The management has duct-taped a carboard path on the floor from the entrance to the frieght elevator. Stay classy TDE!
 
Yonge but not young: Street's historic facades http://www.thestar.com/news/article/918252--yonge-but-not-young-street-s-historic-facades?bn=1

I fear those two empty Banks on Yonge could be the next victims :(


"A Tale of Two Banks 1
Address: 205 Yonge St.
Built: 1906
Worth: $3.65 million in 2007


Four years later, the Irish flag flies between the pillars as a sign of his hold on the heritage site. The flag does come down from time to time when Farrell opens up the bank to film producers who use it as the setting for vintage bank heists in movies. Farrell doesn’t seem to have much time for his French Canadian neighbours (Parasuco) or their plans to build a 25-storey hotel in the parkette between his bank and theirs.

“I’m trying to buy them out,” he says. “I had a deal agreed to and then it fell through.” If he had his way, Farrell says he’d use the two banks as bookends to a modest development project that would see a three-storey residential building built above the rear of the banks. Plan B, he says, is to open up the bank’s ground floor to a restaurant and to rent out the second floor as office space. And the dome? “That could be a really nice apartment,” he says.

A Tale of Two Banks 2
Address: 197 Yonge St.
Built: 1905
Worth: $5 million in 1999
The story: Designed by Frank Darling, the same architect behind the original Royal Ontario Museum and the building that’s now home to the Hockey Hall of Fame, this neo-classic bank is one of the most spectacular heritage buildings in the entire city. Even so, it’s in an advanced state of decay.

Abandoned for decades, the twin pillared bank has long been entombed by a chain-link fence, though it was designated a heritage site back in 1974. Current owners Parasuco Jeans of Montreal bought the property in 1999 and have been absentee owners ever since. According to the city’s Heritage Preservation Services, the site is frequently used by passersby as a makeshift garbage dump. Longtime (and now former) downtown city councilor Kyle Rae calls Parasuco’s treatment of the property a public disgrace. Calls to the number listed on the front of the building went unanswered, but according to Parasuco’s website, the company intends to build a 160-room hotel above what’s left of the existing bank: “The Yonge Street landscape will be forever changed when fashion, architecture, design and bliss come together to create the most ambitious project . . . the Parasuco Hotel.”

The hotel makes for an interesting concept drawing on the company’s website, but neither of the city’s heritage agencies have heard of the project.
 
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Bogtrotter said:
I don't get the sense at all that Torontonians are any less concerned about heritage issues than New Yorkers or Angelenos.
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Are you talking about the 'average' Torontonian? In my experience the average Torontonian would be hard pressed to even acknowledge the city has a heritage, never mind be concerned about it... and for that matter, when we're talking about a city the size and importance of Toronto is this really just an issue for Torontonians? I mean, I'm pretty sure the average Quebecer is pretty aware of the heritage of Montreal whether from there or not. Ditto the average Illinoisan vis a vis Chicago or Californian vis a vis San Fran...

As Rebecca points out there is no culture of preservation here (not even a museum of Toronto), and I would add that until we start to understand that we have something worthy of preserving, and just what it might be in terms of a shared cultural narrative that is meaningful, there probably wont ever be much of one. In other words preserving the Distillery is great but until anybody has a deeper understanding of what the Distillery is in the context of Toronto's heritage it is really just a lucky one-off like the Carlu or like some other repurposed sites. When the meaning is understood and valued the heritage asset likely fares better (Mapeleaf Gardens) than when the meaning is not understood or valued (first Parliament site). So rather than looking to our leaders for more laws, rules and punishments (which maybe we should be still) we should be looking to them to start understanding, valuing and disseminating the cultural/heritage narrative.
 
I wish someone was down there getting shots tonight-- with just the main floor remaining and going fast, it's a surreal sight, all lit up bright like a movie set, and you can still see the racks of clothes inside the previous Urban Behaviour clothing store, etc... pretty awesome scene down there right now if anyone is interested. :)
 
Tewder said:
I mean, I'm pretty sure the average Quebecer is pretty aware of the heritage of Montreal whether from there or not. Ditto the average Illinoisan vis a vis Chicago or Californian vis a vis San Fran...
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Sure, but not necessarily to the point where they'd rally for the heritage of said centres, aside from obvious potboilers which are mostly presently safe-ish anyway. Like, Montreal has plenty of magnificent churches that have been, or are in danger of, closure or deconsecration. You think "average Quebecers" are going to expend elbow grease to join the "sauveur" chorus on their behalf?
 
Tewder said:
Are you talking about the 'average' Torontonian? In my experience the average Torontonian would be hard pressed to even acknowledge the city has a heritage, never mind be concerned about it...
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The politicians and builders of the buildings we want to protect today had no qualms about knocking down structures to make way for progress. What we today call Toronto has been a European settlement since before York's official founding in 1793, however we have little or no buildings from that time because in the mid and late 1800s developers knocked most of it down to build what is today our crumbling heritiage buildings. My point is that only in the last 50 years or so have we been concerned with keeping old buildings from the mid and late 1800s as museum pieces, while in the past when those buildings were constructed no one had such worries, but instead were focused on progress and city building.
 
"Crumbling" and "museum pieces" is a bit contemptuously condescending, is it? I mean, a counter-view might be that a more modern and enlightened view of "progress and city building" thinks better than to blithely dispose of the past...
 
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