From this mornings Toronto Star..
The timing does seem very suspicious..
Building in ruins, neighbours in shock-City still trying to locate owner of demolished heritage structure
Why a heritage building should suddenly collapse on a holiday weekend two months after its sale is striking one neighbour as suspicious.
An unknown owner acquired the property two months ago for $1.8 million, and workers have been coming and going, he said.
Early yesterday, after the rear walls started to cave in, an emergency city wrecking crew destroyed the downtown Georgian row house.
Gone is Walnut Hall, a once- stately structure of four brick homes designed in 1853 by locally renowned architect John Tully and finished in 1858, on the north side of Shuter St. and east of Jarvis St. at George St.
"I was shocked when the fire trucks started arriving Saturday afternoon (on reports bricks were falling)," said Bill Colvin, who lives nearby at Shuter and George Sts.
"The place sold a couple of months ago ... Workers were going in and out for the past several weeks," he said.
"I wouldn't speculate on (the collapse) at all – that's not my role," said Jim Laughlin, the city's deputy chief building official who ordered the demolition and supervised it from midnight until noon.
"What we found was a building collapsing. We had to take immediate action to render it safe."
The owner has not been immediately identified or located, Laughlin said, but will be stuck with the demolition bill.
Along with the heritage bricks, the hopes of local residents to see Walnut Hall restored also came falling down.
"We begged, we pleaded, we got angry, we protested at the committee of adjustment and the OMB (Ontario Municipal Board)," Garden City Residents Association president Eva Curlanis-Bart said of efforts to force a previous owner to uphold a restoration agreement.
"Of course, they won," she said of powers not committed to the building's preservation.
Walnut Hall, originally built as a three-storey row house for well-to-do residents, had gone famously neglected for years.
The RCMP, which once owned much of the block, left the building empty and unheated for two decades.
In 1996, the police sold the property and a number of residential lots behind it, fronting George St., to developer Joe Jonatan. He made it clear he wanted the lots more than the derelict building.
In 1997, the city designated Walnut Hall a heritage site, preventing its demolition.
An agreement was reached allowing Jonatan to build 10 semi-detached homes on the rear lots, providing that he redevelop Walnut Hall.
Blueprints prepared by Diamond and Schmitt Architects show Jonatan's plan for a condominium of some 52 units. The entire Walnut Hall façade was to be preserved and behind the structure was to rise a seven-storey glass tower.
It was never built. Jonatan could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Colvin, a vice-president of Lakeridge Health Network in Durham, said he moved to the immediate area partly because of improvements promised by the condo plan. He kept a copy of the blueprints.
Curlanis-Bart also said she and her husband bought one of the semi-detached homes in 1997 based partly on the total construction plan.
"We waited a year, two years, three years – nothing happened," she said.
Speaking for the association, she said city authorities "shouldn't have allowed these (semi-detached) houses to be built without first a commitment for the redevelopment."
The loss of Walnut Hall is significant, said Curlanis-Bart, an art historian. "It represented the beginning of urban development in the city of Toronto in the mid-19th century."
