City moves to protect key waterfront heritage sites from demolition

The Toronto Preservation Board will be looking at two major historical sites near the city’s waterfront this week — the Hearn generating station in the east, and Exhibition Place in the west — with the hopes of protecting them from the wrecking ball.

At a meeting this Wednesday, the board will consider designating 440 Unwin Avenue a heritage property under the Ontario Heritage Act.

Designer Alex Josephson, co-founder of Partisan Design, helped transform the old Hearn power plant into a cultural venue for the 10th annual Luminato Arts Festival two years ago.

“This is one of those places that we can’t allow to be squandered,” Josephson told CBC Toronto.

“You can’t squander that building and putting that building into a demolition track can’t be an option for the city.”

The city says a demolition permit for the generating station was issued in 2010, but it expired in 2017. Still there’s nothing preventing the owner from seeking another one.

Officially opened on Oct. 26, 1951, the massive 650-thousand cubic metre building began its life as a coal-fired power plant. It was converted to burn natural gas in the 1970s.

It was decommissioned in 1983 and sat empty until Ontario Power Generation began leasing it out in 2002 mainly for film and television productions.

The Hearn also played host to a number of large public events such as Luminato in 2014 and 2016, but Toronto Fire did not allow organizers of a night market to use it in 2017.

While the smokestack — which is twice the height of the Statue of Liberty — is a distinguishable landmark, Josephson says the Hearn’s cavernous interior makes it one of the most extraordinary spaces in the city.

“You know usually when we think of heritage buildings, you think of the outside, but there’s really kind of like a universal agreement that the interior — the open structural lattice of that building — is kind of like the temple of industrial heritage space,” he says.

The province sold the property in November to its longtime tenant —  Studios of America — for $16 million which is why the city can now move to designate it a heritage property, says City Councillor Paula Fletcher.

“Because it was owned by the province, the city couldn’t take steps to designate it a heritage building. But since they’ve sold that building we can now attempt to bring it under heritage protection,” said Fletcher, who has attempted to have the Hearn protected before.

“Now that it’s in private hands we can.”

The Toronto Preservation Board is also looking at a Cultural Heritage Landscape Assessment of Exhibition Place.

“We own it so we can do that. There are incredible buildings at the Ex,” Fletcher said. “We can’t do anything like that with Ontario Place because the province owns it.”

Last week the Architectural Conservancy of Toronto held a panel discussion on the future of Ontario Place.

Architect Annabel Vaughan — a Project Manager at ERA Architects and principal Public LAB — who moderated the panel, says the park which opened in 1971 is a symbol of the “democratization of the waterfront.”

It’s been largely unused since 2011, but the waterfront Trillium Park and William G. Davis Trail which opened in  2017 has been very popular, she said.

Vaughan says while the park had been deemed a cultural heritage property — heritage designations force developers to exercise more caution.

“Technically, you can’t just tear it down,” she says. “It triggers a conversation between the developer or proponents about what’s important and what has value on the site. Some people will rise to that challenge. Some people will see that as an albatross around the site.”

Under the Ontario Heritage Act, an owner of a heritage property can appeal a prohibition on demolition to the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal (LPAT), formerly known as the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB).

Although it cannot designate Ontario Place a heritage property, the city has established a subcommittee on the future of the park that will meet for the first time on March 5.