and so what makes this site unpalatable to you? They had some very narrow constraints on what would be a fit for them and it took them what nearly 2 years to locate this one. They did all the back work to ensure that it was not a heritage building yet now they are being told that they can't do as they please in their own house. To add insult they are then told that the city is fast tracking a movement to place this house on the heritage list without any consultation with them. Obviously this was an attempted end around to block the construction.
I really wonder if this were an existing "modern" house being torn down to build and faux-historic style house if there would be the same cries of heritage preservation as there is now.
Your comment "they can build anywhere else other than this location" reeks of NIMBY'ism IMHO
As you might gather from my 'nom de plume', I don't live in the Beach. It's not NIMBYism, in the sense that I don't have an axe to grind. And, if they were tearing down a Don Mills '50s gem to build a monster home, I'd have the same objection. However, given yours and others' comments, I did take a look at the Google Street View. I had originally thought that the house was south of Queen, so (IMHO) the fact it is a decent chunk north of Queen makes it less of a travesty in my eyes. Still wrong, but lessens the blow to see that it's up by the school, which isn't exactly an architectural gem.
But to the other point of NIMBYism -- yeah, it can go too far. But, if given these guys set up a website and checked on this and checked on that... why didn't they introduce themselves to the neighbours? When we did our gut reno, we introduced ourselves to the neighbours and told them our plans BEFORE we bought our house. Given the media savvy and hugely extensive plans of this couple, why wouldn't they have thought to do that?
And, there are tons of communities where their house plans would be welcome additions to the streetscape. How about the row of modernist piles on top of the Bluffs? Just as beautiful and outdoorsy and park-like a setting (albeit not as close to Queen Street, but a heck of a lot flatter and therefore easier to navigate for a wheelchair-bound person, probably.) How about Casa Loma? West End? Leslieville?
I suspect that they want to live in the Beach because they want to live in the Beach and all that entails -- mature trees, the beaches, the boardwalk, Queen Street -- but they don't want to bow and scrape to the parts of the Beach others love but they don't care for -- the gingerbread houses, the feeling of Muskoka cabins in the city. Sort of like the guy who needed to park his Ferrari on a parking pad in front of his house, but no one else should get a parking pad in front of their places, because then his mature tree streetscape would be ruined. What's the opposite of NIMBY? Do as I say, not as I do? Maybe not, but that's what it feels like to me.
