Summary |
This report recommends that City Council state its intention to designate the property at 95 St. Joseph Street under Part IV, Section 29 of the Ontario Heritage Act. The property at 95 St. Joseph Street contains a four-storey complex originally known as St. Basil's Seminary and now identified as the Cardinal Flahiff Basilian Centre. The seminary is part of the University of St. Michael's College campus at the University of Toronto and is located to the east of Queen's Park and west of Bay Street in the Bay-Cloverhill neighbourhood. St. Basil's Seminary was constructed in 1950-51 as part of the Basilian Fathers centennial project to expand St. Michael's College. The Basilian Fathers originated in France in 1828 and following the appointment of Armand-Francoise-Marie de Charbonnel as Archbishop in 1850, arrived in Toronto in 1852. In 1853, the Basilians amalgamated with St. Michael's College and in 1856 relocated the college to the Clover Hill estate. In 1949, to celebrate the college centenary and support its growth and expansion, the Basilians commissioned Ernest Cormier, OC, the Montreal-based architect and engineer who is regarded as one of Canada's most outstanding 20th-century architects, to design new and separate facilities for a high school, university and seminary. The high school, St. Michael's College was located at St. Clair and Bathurst Street. St. Basil's Seminary and the new university building, Carr Hall (1950-54), were designed by Cormier in partnership with Toronto architects, Brennan & Whale. Cormier's design for the seminary incorporated the historic Newman Hall Chapel (1913), designed by the architect Arthur W. Holmes who had authored the St. Michael's College 1920s campus masterplan and, over the course of 40 years, designed several other buildings for the college. Completed in 1951, and extended in 1959 and 1979-80, the seminary complex is an integral part of the sequence of St. Michael's College buildings constructed over 140 years on the historic Clover Hill estate as part of a Roman Catholic educational enclave which includes the world-renowned Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies and the Marshall McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology. Today, the St. Michael's College campus is distinguished by its collection of low-rise college buildings constructed in a consistent palette of buff brick, limestone and concrete, punctuated by the spires of St. Basil's Church and Carr Hall and set in a series of landscaped open-spaces interwoven with pedestrian pathways which together form a distinct cultural heritage landscape. St. Basil's Seminary is an important contributor to this evolved collection and context of St. Michael's College which forms part of the University of Toronto campus surrounding Queen's Park. Following research and evaluation under Ontario Regulation 9/06, the provincial criteria prescribed for municipal designation, staff have determined that the property at 95 St. Joseph Street merits designation under Part IV Section 29 of the Ontario Heritage Act for its design, associative and contextual value. An Official Plan and Zoning By-law Amendment application has been submitted to permit the redevelopment of the property at 95 St. Joseph Street with a 39-storey, mixed-use building with a 12-storey podium. The proposed development would retain the front façade of the existing building, remove the later 1979-80 projecting fourth-floor addition and restore the original façade features. The interior chapel will be relocated, and will no longer be an active place of worship. It is proposed to be a multi-purpose amenity space within the development. The remainder of the existing four-storey St. Basil's Seminary and the Newman Hall Chapel would be demolished. In June 2019, the More Homes, More Choice Act, 2019 (Bill 108) received Royal Assent. Schedule 11 of this Act included amendments to the Ontario Heritage Act (OHA). The Bill 108 Amendments to the OHA came into force on July 1, 2021, which included a shift in Part IV designations related certain Planning Act applications. Section 29(1.2) of the OHA now restricts City Council's ability to give notice of its intention to designate a property under the OHA to within 90 days after the City Clerk gives notice of a complete application. The application currently under review was deemed complete prior to the new legislation coming into force. Designation enables City Council to review proposed alterations, enforce heritage property standards and maintenance, and refuse demolition. |
Subsequent to this Intention to Designate hearing (calling out this line in particular: staff have determined that the property at 95 St. Joseph Street merits designation under Part IV Section 29 of the Ontario Heritage Act for its design, associative and contextual value.
This is an insensitive destruction of the existing heritage building which was comprehensively approved for level four protection by the Toronto Preservation Board on 24th January 2022 for its design, associative and contextual values. The approval was supported by a record-setting number of community submissions. The developer and the owner should think again before proceeding with their application for site-specific exemptions which would sanction the demolishing of the greater part of the assemblage of heritage buildings on this site, which includes the original Newman Chapel (1913), the chapel at the rear to which you refer.
No - the Basilian Fathers have announced that they will be leaving the site completely.