TJ O'Pootertoot
Senior Member
It is a little sad how things keep spinning round and round. I don't consider myself in the "preservationist" camp so much. I want to see this project made workable, not killed, nor imposed without due consideration. (And I won't even dignify the notion that our skyline is lacking with a response. It's a) superficial and b) absurd. Also c) not a reason to build something that will improve it's silhouette on postcards.)
Adma is right that those pictures of the warehouse don't show anything. If this was an architecture competition, obviously M&G would win, but it's not. A barn can be a designated heritage structure and so can a house. The mere fact that it's a typical construction can justify its designation. I posted the provincial guidelines a few pages back so I won't do it again but suffice it to say that those pictures wouldn't mean much at a Conservation Review Board hearing, and the fact that a Tim Hortons is in it now means even less. As I said earlier, even an abandoned building can be of significant heritage. Present use is meaningless. Nobody here has to defend them. Rather, the onus is on M&G to explain why they should be torn down.
I'm not saying their entirety needs to be protected but getting into a pissing match about how pretty or useful any of us think they are is beside the point. They were designated in a legal process and the owner did not object. That is the context in which Gehry and Mirvish have to design their project. Someone upthread mentioned that 500 years from now, a 500-year-old M&G will mean a lot more than 600-year-old warehouses would and until you really think about it, that does kind of sound about right. But it misses the whole point and in a city that's only 200 years old, it's a slippery slope. If someone suggested building condos over the Roman Colosseum site, it would be an easy discussion for all of us. Our heritage isn't so old, nor so grand. But even in ancient cities like Rome and Jerusalem there are "boring," and "unremarkable" buildings, some of which probably house the local equivalent of Tim Hortons, that are significant because they are typical and because they're just still around.
We're not Rome or Jerusalem but that doesn't mean we have no heritage of our own. If everyone can take a deep breath, watch the process and then judge the results, it would probably be more constructive.
EDIT: Just to add this superficial example of what I was talking about. There's this building up in the historic village of Richmond Hill, or rather there was, called Lorne Block. If you'd gone to see it about 10 years ago, you'd have seen a crappy, whitewashed building housing a XXX video store. You'd probably notice it had some nice gables on it. Well, it turns out this 1880s building was where the town council had its first meeting. It also turned out that the owners did such a bad job preserving it that it had to be torn down, despite efforts to save it. In this instance, the developer was good enough to build an exact replica that's there today. It differs from the present example in all sorts of respects but those who are derisive of the warehouses' heritage value might stop to consider how beauty is in the eye of the beholder and how little you can glean just by looking at a building.
Adma is right that those pictures of the warehouse don't show anything. If this was an architecture competition, obviously M&G would win, but it's not. A barn can be a designated heritage structure and so can a house. The mere fact that it's a typical construction can justify its designation. I posted the provincial guidelines a few pages back so I won't do it again but suffice it to say that those pictures wouldn't mean much at a Conservation Review Board hearing, and the fact that a Tim Hortons is in it now means even less. As I said earlier, even an abandoned building can be of significant heritage. Present use is meaningless. Nobody here has to defend them. Rather, the onus is on M&G to explain why they should be torn down.
I'm not saying their entirety needs to be protected but getting into a pissing match about how pretty or useful any of us think they are is beside the point. They were designated in a legal process and the owner did not object. That is the context in which Gehry and Mirvish have to design their project. Someone upthread mentioned that 500 years from now, a 500-year-old M&G will mean a lot more than 600-year-old warehouses would and until you really think about it, that does kind of sound about right. But it misses the whole point and in a city that's only 200 years old, it's a slippery slope. If someone suggested building condos over the Roman Colosseum site, it would be an easy discussion for all of us. Our heritage isn't so old, nor so grand. But even in ancient cities like Rome and Jerusalem there are "boring," and "unremarkable" buildings, some of which probably house the local equivalent of Tim Hortons, that are significant because they are typical and because they're just still around.
We're not Rome or Jerusalem but that doesn't mean we have no heritage of our own. If everyone can take a deep breath, watch the process and then judge the results, it would probably be more constructive.
EDIT: Just to add this superficial example of what I was talking about. There's this building up in the historic village of Richmond Hill, or rather there was, called Lorne Block. If you'd gone to see it about 10 years ago, you'd have seen a crappy, whitewashed building housing a XXX video store. You'd probably notice it had some nice gables on it. Well, it turns out this 1880s building was where the town council had its first meeting. It also turned out that the owners did such a bad job preserving it that it had to be torn down, despite efforts to save it. In this instance, the developer was good enough to build an exact replica that's there today. It differs from the present example in all sorts of respects but those who are derisive of the warehouses' heritage value might stop to consider how beauty is in the eye of the beholder and how little you can glean just by looking at a building.
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