There are many scenarios in which a different planning regime would make this building a harder target.
I don't disagree, in a world in which we had completely a completely different planning and regulatory regime from the province.
And I'm all for that.......
I'm simply saying City Planning operates with the tools currently available to it.
They are legally mandated to do so.
If you feel there is an
existing tool they did not make good use of here, I would love to hear about that.
Elsewise, we're discussing reforms that will likely have to come from a different level of government.
In the world we live in, the heritage listing of this neighbourhood was a joke that recognized many buildings of no architectural or historical value in a misguided attempt to protect them as small storefronts. Our heritage system has been a capricious mess. It doesn’t need to be that way.
We completely agree on the above.
Though, again, we face real challenges in changing this without provincial intervention.
Heritage designation at the neighbourhood level here was misused in an attempt to protect scale to some degree, and the traditional retail storefront. That's not what the designation should be used for.........
The question though is, did the City have the means to compel proper redevelopment which preserves fine-grained retail, and which gives people the illusion of human-scale, and warm building materials like masonry, or stone, rather than endless glazing, spandrel, pre-cast and aluminum that's been oil-canned to death?
To the extent they have some options to do somewhat better (and I think they do) they should use these; but truthfully the provincial planning framework which largely precludes Planning addressing aesthetic tastes is a serious obstacle and ends up with Councillors doing what they can (but shouldn't) to hold back the tide. A mostly rubber-stamp OLT then compounds this issue; a burden that few other jurisdictions have to deal with (a highly interventionist, developer-friendly, planning appeals body)
