This is really blowing up on twitter. Once again, I'm really angered by the fact that all the information seems to be coming from the Corbella column. Everyone seems to be organizing themselves in to the familiar camps: conservatives standing up for the liberties of small business owners versus liberals appealing to the greater social good. And, since
@Sambo brought it up earlier, the Calgary
socialists on twitter actually seem to be in support of the DQ on the grounds that pushing it out would contribute to gentrification.
There seems to be no room for hashing out the actual details of this particular case. I don't even know what the current zoning laws say about rebuilding in exactly the same way.