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  #381  
Old Posted Mar 3, 2016, 8:20 AM
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Can't believe this is going on and on - heritage sell-out. Also seeing some of the buildings torn down here, like that very first one from years ago in Hamilton... lame.

http://www.vancouversun.com/business..._lsa=e195-a368
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  #382  
Old Posted Apr 2, 2016, 5:25 PM
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Bryn Mawr or Baird Cottage, a 1907 Queen Anne country house in St. John's, is at risk of being demolished. The owner has applied for a demolition permit. The house has Registered Heritage Structure status with the province, but does not have heritage status with the municipality. In St. John's, only municipal heritage status comes with any legal protection.

The rumor is that a local real-estate development firm, KMK Capital, has agreed to purchase the seven acre lot on condition that a demolition permit is approved. A similar event happened last year when the 1883 Quinnipiac house at 25 Winter Avenue was demolished (see previous thread, and interior photos ). The owner had a sale pending with local ophthalmologist Chris Jackman, conditional on an approved demolition permit. City Council (with councillors Lane and Hickman notably dissenting) refused to issue municipal heritage status, claiming (falsely) that the City would be at legal risk due to the pending sale.

Adding insult to injury, KMK Capital purchased the 1848 Richmond Cottage back around 2011. City Council at the time approved a plan to subdivide the 3.5 acre lot and squeeze in 11 detached houses on the condition that KMK Capital restore Richmond Cottage to sell as a duplex townhouse (see development plans ). Finally, a wealthy developer and Council were going to prove that it is possible to save historic buildings all while increasing density and making a profit ( http://www.thetelegram.com/News/Loca...1800s-figure/1 ). Fast forward five years and KMK has built and sold the 11 houses while letting Richmond Cottage decay. They are now seeking a demolition permit, claiming restoration would be too expensive ( http://www.thetelegram.com/Business/...alling-apart/1 ). In an unusual move, City Council recently approved a Memorandum of Understanding that requires KMK to sell Richmond Cottage for $350,000 by May 1, 2017. If unsold, the Memorandum states that Council will agree to allow the building be demolished ( http://www.thetelegram.com/News/Loca...-May-1,-2017/1 ). What's particularly strange is the Memorandum can't be legally binding. Current Council cannot bind the decisions of future Council. I worry that come 2017 some Councillors will wrongly claim the Memorandum has tied their hands and vote to allow demolition. I wish the city would either expropriate (at 1848, it's one of the oldest in the city), or flex some muscle and rezone it to parkland. That would set a nice precedent for future developers speculating on historic lots.

Given the tension between City Council and KMK Capital over Richmond Cottage, a stronger than usual public outcry, and the symbolic provincial heritage status, there's hope that Council will vote to designate Bryn Mawr a municipal heritage building, saving it from short-term demolition. However, Richmond Cottage also has municipal heritage status, and that hasn't saved it yet. KMK has the resources to wait for Bryn Mawr to crumble. They've already had much of the interior stripped, possibly to bolster claims that building is falling apart. It would be great if Council would just rezone the whole seven acres as parkland, leaving renovation of the house as the only legal option.

Some local media:
http://www.thetelegram.com/News/Loca...ric-building/1
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfou...mawr-1.3516311
http://www.vocm.com/newsarticle.asp?mn=2&ID=61611

Bryn Mawr exterior:




Bryn Mawr interior, stripped:




Richmond Cottage exterior:


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  #383  
Old Posted Apr 2, 2016, 7:17 PM
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Slated for demolition, Ottawa's former Delta/National Hotel:


http://wikimapia.org/1199500/350-Spa...#/photo/134850

To be replaced with this:


http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-...-of-demolition
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  #384  
Old Posted Apr 2, 2016, 8:05 PM
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Well, it certainly is quintessential 1970s chain-hotel brutalism.
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  #385  
Old Posted Apr 7, 2016, 1:43 AM
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The Maritime Life melodrama in Halifax continues. The corner building is the only one remaining (a bank building and some Victorian rowhouses have already been torn down):

Quote:
Originally Posted by RoshanMcG View Post
The developer is now apparently considering saving the building, which has tons of character on the outside and an Art Deco lobby full of marble and interesting metalwork. The heavy machinery that would have been needed to tear it down has moved to another construction site elsewhere in the city (after a few days ago falling through one of the floors of the other buildings).

Saving the building makes sense even beyond the architectural character perspective because there's a public library across the street with a rooftop patio and a significant view that would be blocked if the new development were built up to 8 floors or so on the corner:


See more details here, including interior shots: http://halifaxbloggers.ca/noticedinn...ites-the-dust/

You can see the Citadel there plus Artillery Park, which has a handful of interesting historic buildings from the War of 1812 period (the Cambridge Military Library's collection goes back to 1810). And lots of artillery pieces from a number of different periods sitting around outside.

We'll see what happens!
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  #386  
Old Posted Apr 7, 2016, 1:59 AM
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I hope it's saved!
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  #387  
Old Posted Apr 7, 2016, 2:43 AM
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At that rate soon there won't be heritage buildings left in Halifax!
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  #388  
Old Posted Apr 7, 2016, 3:19 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lio45 View Post
At that rate soon there won't be heritage buildings left in Halifax!
You could make a little neighbourhood out of the heritage buildings that have been torn down there over the past couple of years. They're mostly mid-range buildings, nothing really amazing, but they add a lot of character to the city. Along this particular street developers have mostly been building generic-looking glass boxes. I think the area has become a lot more vibrant as a result of the construction but a lot of the demolition is fundamentally pretty unnecessary. With some smarter planning a lot of it could have been avoided.

The same developer announced he wants to redevelop another small stone building nearby, and it's not clear that he'll be preserving any of it (there's no requirement; even if you have a registered heritage building you are allowed to demolish it after waiting 3 years for a permit). Just next door to that another developer converted an old house into a restaurant, tore it down about a year later to build condos (that would involve demolishing another 2 buildings), then decided not to so it's sitting there as a parking lot. One block down from that, another building owner said he was considering tearing down another 4 storey sandstone office building. A block away from that, the old CBC building is being torn down and the YMCA next to it was demolished a few months ago. It's pretty crazy.

One of the maddening things is that the viewplane protections prevent the city from issuing a density bonus to the developer of the Maritime Life site in exchange for preserving the old building. Heritage (NIMBY) groups in the city are behind the viewplanes. It is very likely that the so-called heritage groups prefer the building to be demolished rather than compromising their height limits. For years they have advocated for height limits to preserve buildings (by supposedly reducing the incentive to demolish and build higher) and that has been an utter failure. The low height limits combined with the lack of real protection seems to encourage demolition and mediocre development, whereas highrise projects tend to feature adaptive reuse. I don't necessarily think allowing more height is a real solution, but low height limits combined with next to no heritage protection seems in practice to be the worst of both worlds.
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  #389  
Old Posted Apr 7, 2016, 12:14 PM
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For a city that likes to market itself as some sort of quaint little Theodore Tugboat sailor's village, Halifax has very little appreciation for its actual history.

Although I guess those two things are related.
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  #390  
Old Posted Apr 7, 2016, 12:42 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kool maudit View Post
For a city that likes to market itself as some sort of quaint little Theodore Tugboat sailor's village, Halifax has very little appreciation for its actual history.

Although I guess those two things are related.
The reality of Halifax is that it's much more like a standard, 21st century, North American east-coast city. Lots of great history, but it's far from some preserved-in-amber throwback to seafaring days of yore. Overall that's for the better, I think. (There are some people who want to live in a model village, but I'm not one of them.)

But local developers have been especially cavalier about our built heritage recently, and the city might make a little grunt of disapproval but isn't really empowered to do anything about it. This is a case in point, as Someone123 says. The developer has suggested a compromise can be struck, in which he'd build higher on part of the lot and preserve this building, but that would contravene the city's viewplanes, which are practically sacred to a small but vocal number of people, and protected in the city's planning regime. The local councillor for this district has expressed his dislike of the demolition plans, but is unwilling to touch the viewplane issue.
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  #391  
Old Posted Apr 7, 2016, 3:31 PM
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It's unfathomable to me that some people might prefer a sea of drab cookie-cutter modern filler with all the viewplanes intact to a scenario where you'd conserve the Victorian-era buildings but fill the holes with taller buildings to make up.

It sounds so dumb it feels like a joke... Viewplanes are more important than authentic old architecture?!? The reason for viewplanes in the first place is that you're not Laval or Mississauga!!! If you become it, you won't even need your sacred viewplanes anymore anyway.
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  #392  
Old Posted Apr 7, 2016, 3:59 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MTLskyline View Post
Not a recent demolition but unfortunate:

The Architects's Building in Montreal (1930-1968) - aka the Du Pont Building


https://news.google.com/newspapers?n...,3315455&hl=en






more photos: http://imgur.com/a/yDYtE
what a shame. Montreal has lost so many quality structures. Thankfully, some are still with us.
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  #393  
Old Posted Apr 7, 2016, 4:06 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by flar View Post
Demolition crews have moved into Gore Park in Hamilton:





That row of old buildings will be demolished and replaced with...nothing specific, at least not for about three years, if interests rates stay low.

The stone ones below are over 150 years old.

The developer announced his plans yesterday. The stone facade buildings will remain.


http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilt...ings-1.3523314
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  #394  
Old Posted Apr 7, 2016, 4:24 PM
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What the hell is going on in Halifax and Hamilton lately? Whar are they, trying to out do 1960's Montreal / Toronto?
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  #395  
Old Posted Apr 7, 2016, 4:47 PM
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There's a lot more economic development happening in Hamilton than in the past (suspect the same for Halifax) and so some buildings are getting sacrificed along the way.
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  #396  
Old Posted Apr 7, 2016, 5:32 PM
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The only interesting bit in that picture full of generic office buildings is precisely the one that's getting demolished... *facepalm*
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  #397  
Old Posted Apr 7, 2016, 5:48 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Drybrain View Post
The reality of Halifax is that it's much more like a standard, 21st century, North American east-coast city. Lots of great history, but it's far from some preserved-in-amber throwback to seafaring days of yore. Overall that's for the better, I think. (There are some people who want to live in a model village, but I'm not one of them.)
The situation seems to come down to a few different influential groups that each have their own largely incompatible vision of what the city should be like. There's one contingent that thinks the city is teetering on the brink of economic collapse, can't afford to have nice things like heritage buildings, and must approve of all development. Then there's the pro-heritage/NIMBY crowd that's mostly about home ownership; a canonical heritage building for them is a 1790 sea captain's house, not a 20th century commercial building. On top of this there is the provincial government which is one of the biggest land owners downtown but is at best mildly disdainful toward the city.

There's also a huge amount of weird cultural baggage in the city. A lot of people in Halifax believe (or believed; maybe this is changing) that the city doesn't have any nice buildings worth saving or can't be under development pressure.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a politically empowered group that is forward-looking yet interested in preserving the best aspects of the city's character, including modern buildings, so anything from about the 1880-1980 window is on the chopping block right now. This isn't a new thing, it's been the normal state of affairs in the city for decades. The 80's were probably worse than today.

There does seem to be more and more consciousness around urban planning and design, so the new buildings are at least a lot better than they used to be, but the city isn't yet doing a good job of preserving the best of what's already been built. It's too bad, because it that had been figured out decades ago the urban core could have become something much better than what it is right now.
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  #398  
Old Posted Apr 7, 2016, 6:05 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lio45 View Post
It sounds so dumb it feels like a joke... Viewplanes are more important than authentic old architecture?!? The reason for viewplanes in the first place is that you're not Laval or Mississauga!!! If you become it, you won't even need your sacred viewplanes anymore anyway.
To give you an idea of what the regulatory climate is like, there's a developer in Halifax restoring a Victorian building and they weren't permitted to recreate the original spire (which was removed maybe in the mid-20th century sometime) because it intrudes a bit into a viewplane.

This is the spire we're talking about:



And here's the scaled-back rooftop element:


https://haligonia.ca/nfb-building-re...gton-st-82112/
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  #399  
Old Posted Apr 7, 2016, 8:24 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123 View Post
To give you an idea of what the regulatory climate is like, there's a developer in Halifax restoring a Victorian building and they weren't permitted to recreate the original spire (which was removed maybe in the mid-20th century sometime) because it intrudes a bit into a viewplane.
Developer can't get a variance by-law from City Council? What is he, poor?
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  #400  
Old Posted Apr 7, 2016, 8:49 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jthetzel View Post
Developer can't get a variance by-law from City Council? What is he, poor?
There's not really such a thing as a variance from viewplanes. They're basically inviolable.
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