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Future of the Hearn Generating Station

lenaitch said:
A derelict, contaminated industrial site that was hated by just about everybody when it was in operation but now a beloved heritage structure? Give me a break.
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I think it became a beloved heritage structure after it was actually opened up to the masses a few years back; it shouldn't be all that surprising that people only miss something after they've actually had the opportunity to interact with it for the first time.

So much development in Toronto during the boom is so very bland and unremarkable, that it's totally understandable that people are yearning for more interesting proposals -- i.e. the type that a more enterprising purchaser would consider for this very site. Loads of other cities are undertaking fascinating reclamation projects with formerly derelict buildings, and this represents a huge missed opportunity for Toronto to do the same.

This sucks because it means nothing cool will come of this site, this sucks because our super-sketchy and uninventive Premier sold it to a buddy of his for a song, and this sucks because people with a modicum of vision know what we're standing to lose.
 
It was a coal fired generating station not Old City Hall. Now it's a contaminated site surrounded by a switchyard and a gas fired plant. Other than an industrial-looking, wide open movie set, what use is it as it stand? Artists studio? Give tours? Is it beloved for what it was, is or could be?
I won't argue the amount it was sold for, I have no idea what it is worth on the open market, but to do anything with it will require somebody to spend a pile-o-dough, and it will still be surrounded by the other facilities unless public money is spent to move them.
It's not the R C Harris plant - few public infrastructure buildings are.
 
lenaitch said:
It was a coal fired generating station not Old City Hall. Now it's a contaminated site surrounded by a switchyard and a gas fired plant. Other than an industrial-looking, wide open movie set, what use is it as it stand? Artists studio? Give tours? Is it beloved for what it was, is or could be?
I won't argue the amount it was sold for, I have no idea what it is worth on the open market, but to do anything with it will require somebody to spend a pile-o-dough, and it will still be surrounded by the other facilities unless public money is spent to move them.
It's not the R C Harris plant - few public infrastructure buildings are.
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It sounds like you’ve never been in there.
 
ADRM said:
It sounds like you’ve never been in there.
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Or, for that matter, out of there. Again, just because the place was a "coal fired generating station" in the middle of portlands doesn't mean it was "hated"--in fact, it was too isolated and insulated to inspire such "hatred". Indeed, in real terms I'd imagine the Hearn inspired less "hatred" than, say, the Hudson Bay Centre. It was less villain than enigma--and to those budding Burtynskys who ventured out there, road-tripped along Unwin or watched the submarine races at Cherry Beach, even an object of sublime awe, even when in operation and before it was stripped and coopted for movies/videos/urbex; maybe not *quite* at the level of Giles Gilbert Scott's London power stations (though more comparable in effect to those than to RC Harris), but certainly as something more than a raw eyesore. And as for "most people", they never really *engaged* to the place until it came to be framed in positive artspacey terms in recent times. It never had a chance to be mass-hated...or if "hatred" *is* to be had here, it's less for what it objectively is than for what it environmentally did (contaminated brownfields etc)

Furthermore, that's an awful lot of building to tear down. Even with broader remediation concerns in mind, I'm sure there can be an economic argument offered for creative retention over demolition.

Come to think of it, I'm thinking back to Lakeview Generating Station in Mississauga; which is a loss I'm not bawling tears over, but I can't ascribe universal hatred to it while it existed--its multiple lakefront smokestacks were probably Mississauga's most distinctive pre-Marilyn "skyline" landmark; and to locals, it represented "livelihood", which when it comes to "community" can play a spiritual role beyond raw aesthetic judgment. (Just like other lost industrial anchors like Goodyear in New Toronto, or Bethlehem Steel in Lackawanna, etc)
 
Fair points. I suppose at some point the taxpayers and/or property owners will have to determine whether the costs of remediation/decontamination/stabilization/renovation are worth the value of retention.
The last point of 'livelihood' in terms of commercial/industrial properties in a community is interesting. Obviously, once a site is out-of-service, it becomes a matter for the property owner to dispose of as they see fit. Private money can come in but it will expect to make money. Public money can come in to preserve or create some form of social or community value but that is affected by the public's willingness to pay for it. What I find really interesting is the, for want of a better word, distain for commercial/industrial properties while they are still there. You will often see views that Redpath or Downsview or some rail yard shouldn't be there because it stands in the way of progress, condos, new urbanism or whatever.
 
If we're lucky they'll hold on to the site for a couple of decades and do something similar to London's Battersea Power Station.

939_939X569.jpg


... but I wouldn't bet on it.
 
lenaitch said:
What I find really interesting is the, for want of a better word, distain for commercial/industrial properties while they are still there. You will often see views that Redpath or Downsview or some rail yard shouldn't be there because it stands in the way of progress, condos, new urbanism or whatever.
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Though, disdain from whom? Redpath's actually basked in 50s modern icondom for quite some time now--in its very name, Sugar Beach is a tribute to its presence. Likewise, re the hangars et al at Downsview in that there've been actual heritage guidelines in place (albeit inconsistently applied); and re rail yards, there's a reason why the roundhouse is still there next to Skydome.

And if such disdain is prevalent on UT, it might just reflect the fact of message-boarding skyscraper/development geeks who aren't all that conditioned t/w appreciating pre-existing conditions.
 
FNTS said:
If we're lucky they'll hold on to the site for a couple of decades and do something similar to London's Battersea Power Station.
... but I wouldn't bet on it.
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Battersea...I'm sanguine on it structurally and and as a testament to glorious engineering at its inception, but be very careful using it as a comparator:
Battersea Power Station: desperate times or still desirable?
UK Telegraph
Anna White
1 OCTOBER 2016 • 4:04PM

You would expect an unspoken comradery to exist between central London’s property developers. Not a bit of it. More than one has quietly branded the vast 500-acre construction site stretching from Battersea Power Station (BPS) in south-west London to Vauxhall as “the Nine Elms disease” after the area on the south bank of the Thames where it is found.
The main criticisms being fired from inside the industry are an oversupply of luxury homes flooding Zone One at a time of slowing demand and a disjointed approach to “placemaking” by the different building firms, from Barratt Homes to the Chinese construction company Wanda.
Commentators are also fixated with a lack of affordable housing and the sale of homes to overseas investors who won’t live there. There could also be a new enemy at the gate: last week, London Mayor Sadiq Khan launched an unprecedented inquiry into the extent of foreign money piling into the city’s housing market.
Amid the furore, Nine Elms has become the poster child of everything that is perceived to be wrong with the luxury central London property market, with the conversion of Battersea Power Station, an internationally cherished landmark, bearing the brunt of the crescendoing discontent.
The project, which was approved in 2010, has cost its Malaysian backers £9bn, including a contribution of £211m to the extension of the Northern Line which will bring two new tube stations to the area.

It is also of historic importance. The once crumbling power station, which was closed in 1983 and left uninhabitable apart from peregrine falcons living in the Doric chimneys, is now being transformed into a 42-acre miniature town.

In a meeting in the temporary visitors’ centre, surrounded by laser-cut perspex models of the site, Tincknell pours scorn on much of the speculation surrounding BPS, calling it “tosh” and “myth”. He also tackles the issue of falling sales.

Once completed, the site will deliver 4,353 new homes and, of those launched, 85pc have now been sold. Of phase one, or Circus West, which runs to the west of the power station, 75pc of the 865 homes were sold in the first week of the 2013 launch. There are 353 units in the power station itself, phase two, and again only “a few are left” – although exact numbers are not forthcoming.

Efforts are now being concentrated on selling the first half of phase three: Battersea Roof Gardens, designed by Norman Foster, of Gherkin fame, and Prospect Place. Of the 500 units on offer, two-thirds have been sold.[...]
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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/propert...r-station-desperate-times-or-still-desirable/

Article is non-subscription if title Googled.

Doc here:
 
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adma said:
Though, disdain from whom? Redpath's actually basked in 50s modern icondom for quite some time now--in its very name, Sugar Beach is a tribute to its presence. Likewise, re the hangars et al at Downsview in that there've been actual heritage guidelines in place (albeit inconsistently applied); and re rail yards, there's a reason why the roundhouse is still there next to Skydome.

And if such disdain is prevalent on UT, it might just reflect the fact of message-boarding skyscraper/development geeks who aren't all that conditioned t/w appreciating pre-existing conditions.
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It might be 'geekdom' but I have also read officials who complain that places like Redpath or LaFarge don't fit into the waterfront plan (no, I cannot cite). I'm not sure Sugar Beach is so much a "tribute" as it is an exercise in simply place naming, much like the inane names given to some condo developments.
 
Admiral Beez said:
Does the sale impact the rail network? I recall seeing that the track from Lakeshore to the “port” goes through the power plant property.

https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threa...l-lines.25310/#lg=_xfUid-6-1543305342&slide=0
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Yes, the rail spur going west to the former Toronto Cruise Terminal area at Cherry & Unwin does go through the site and yes the Ports Toronto people paid to have it repaired a couple of years ago and, yes there have been no trains actually using it for about 5 years. (Recently trains only use this spur as far as the Water Treatment Plant on Leslie and even that service is currently blocked as the new Post Office sorting building being erected Leslie blocks it and there is no sign of the 'promised' relocation of that part of the rail to run along Leslie itself.) I will not be surprised if the line is quietly abandoned.
 
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