Queen Street's devastating fire was only the beginning
Owner of Duke's Cycle says moves by city officials and the province's property tax assessment corporation has compounded the devastation wrought by the flames of last year
Jeff Gray and Jennifer Lewington
Monday, Jun. 08, 2009 03:56AM EDT
All that's left of Duke's Cycle and its neighbours on Queen Street West is a post-Blitz-like field of rubble, punctuated by jagged piles of beaten wooden beams, rusted metal and chunks of red brick.
The only sign there was a bike shop here for almost 100 years is a few black scraps of what used to be bicycle tires lying in the dirt. The store, along with several other businesses in a dilapidated but historic strip near Bathurst Street, was destroyed in a massive fire in February of 2008.
That was bad enough, says Gary Duke, the owner of the bike shop who has temporarily relocated his business to Richmond Street. But he says what has happened since – at the hands of city officials and the province's property tax assessment corporation – has compounded the devastation wrought by the flames of last year.
Not only did the city slip his family a bill for $33,000 for the demolition and cleanup of their fire-ravaged property, which he calls an “outrage.†But with the old building torn down, the city's grandfathered property-tax discount for these small businesses, now a vacant lot of prime downtown real estate, also went up in smoke.
That part of the rubble still owned by Mr. Duke's parents, who are now in their mid-80s, has seen its annual property tax bill almost double, from $12,000 a year before the fire to $22,000 a year today, Mr. Duke said, even after he applied for a reduction since it is a vacant lot earning his family nothing.
Worse, if he and his family go ahead and rebuild their store – which had been there since 1914, started by his grandfather – Mr. Duke believes his property tax would double again. And efforts to rebuild are hampered, he said, by the province's demand that an archeological study take place first.
“It's just another kick in the private parts,†Mr. Duke said, accusing the city of being “heartless.â€
The local city councillor, Adam Vaughan, (Ward 20, Trinity Spadina), has called for a cap on the new taxes or for special grants to offset them, if the businesses are rebuilt as they were before the fire. He says leaving the rules as is will mean only large corporate chain stores will be able to afford to locate in the rebuilt strip.
Mr. Vaughan said the situation was absurd: “City hall shouldn't profit from the tragedy and misfortune of small business in the city … Let's not take advantage of a fire, and let's not use a fire to bankrupt families that have been paying taxes for years.â€
But city bureaucrats have warned against any special treatment for the six properties destroyed. They say offering special grants or tax breaks could set a precedent that would force the city to ease the burdens on other retail strips that redevelop, potentially costing the city millions in tax revenue.
“It just may be seen by other members of council as a device that they could use for areas in their ward or that sort of thing,†said Peter Moore of the city's planning department. “It's very difficult to control the process when that starts to happen.â€
As to the $33,000 bill for what Mr. Duke called a fee for the investigation of the fire, the city says it is charging all six property owners a total of $204,600 to cover the costs of a contractor who demolished the remaining burnt-out structures and removed the debris required to make the site safe for fire investigators.
According to a staff report, if the bills are not paid, the city could place a lien on the properties, making it harder for the owners to get loans or sell the land.
The issue of how to help the Queen Street property owners was referred to the planning department for further study by Mayor David Miller's executive committee meeting last week.
Councillor Howard Moscoe (Ward 15, Eglinton-Lawrence) and others on the committee said they were concerned about bending city policy on tax incentives to apply to retail developments, as the limited policy is supposed to be used only to attract high-tech or high-skilled jobs, or for large so-called “transformative†projects.
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I think this is a very difficult issue. On the one hand, the city is right that it would be unfair to introduce a preferential tax rate for a standard new retail building, though I think that it would be reasonable in this special circumstance to allow them to retain their grandfathered rates if they rebuild the same type of buildings that were there before. On the other hand, those buildings are exactly what the City is trying to promote on all of our main streets. If the tax system is directly precluding them from being built, then there's something wrong with the tax system. Narrow streetfront buildings that can house independent stores, perhaps with a couple floors of apartments on top, are the basis of a successful street. Right now, it seems that building codes and the tax structure are preventing any new buildings like that from being built. Anything new seems to either be a high rise or take up a full block. Without policy changes in other departments, the City's Avenues plans seem pretty much impossible.