A city committee voted to allow the demolition of century-and-a-half-old Lowertown buildings that are in an advanced state of decay and hotbeds of drug-fuelled “chaos.”
A neighbour welcomed the decision, which must still be approved at a full meeting of council. But the local community association called it yet another failure to protect heritage that puts the neighbourhood’s historic character at risk.
The three buildings stand in a row on St. Patrick Street, just west of Dalhousie Street. The oldest could date back as early as 1851, while the others were built in the 1870s.
City staff told council’s built heritage committee on Tuesday that all are in “very poor condition” and beyond saving. One has buckling walls and is at risk of structural collapse.
An engineering report said it “may pose a danger to the unsuspecting public if permitted to weather another winter season.”
Rats and drugs overwhelm neighbours
The buildings are owned by Brian Dagenais, who spoke to CBC this past winter to share the destruction wrought by tenants placed there through a city-sponsored housing-first program.
Janet Thompson Mar lives behind one of the buildings. She came to the committee on Tuesday to share the horrors she’s witnessed.
“There has been extreme social disorder, chaos,” she said. “There were lengthy periods of time where my neighbours and I could not use our outdoor spaces because the level of organic trash and, unfortunately, human waste and needles and syringes and pipes that filled the backyard there attracted rats, which then proliferated.”
She watched police “swarming” the site, with rifles pointing at one of the buildings, in a large drug bust last fall. She said she’s seen people injecting drugs and crawling through the trash to treat overdoses with naloxone.
“We watched in the middle of the night emergency vehicles … for people who didn’t make it,” she said.
She noted that there are no longer any “tenants,” as such, in the buildings, though people keep ripping down the boards covering the windows to get inside. She worries they will light fires to stay warm in cold weather.
Leslie Collins, the city’s program manager of heritage planning, called the buildings “problematic properties” that are frequently broken into and have generated more than 75 bylaw calls.
Buildings’ decay ‘a wake-up call’
Dagenais applied to demolish the buildings, which have protection as part of Lowertown’s heritage conservation district. City staff support his application, and Thompson Mar said she’s “very grateful.”
But Josiah Frith of the Lowertown Community Association said the three buildings are among the oldest in the district and called their demolition a “huge loss” for the city.
“Those of us living in Lowertown see these losses as the result of relentless pressure by some property owners and developers to demolish Lowertown’s built heritage for profit. Year after year we are experiencing a steady erosion of the historic character of our neighbourhood,” he said.
“The demolition of these three heritage buildings should be a wake-up call.”
While he didn’t contest the engineering report, he blamed the decay on a “do-nothing approach” and “woefully inadequate” interventions by the city.
Frith asked the city to impose stringent requirements for any new buildings replacing those now occupying the site. He said they should be replicas, or at least copy the historic facades.
“The city’s response should make it clear that there must be consequences for demolition by neglect,” he said.
Councillors put condition on new builds
A motion from Rideau-Vanier Coun. Stéphanie Plante, who represents the area, took a step in that direction.
It asked staff to consider “the historic architectural expression of the existing buildings and contribution they make to the streetscape” in any further application for new construction.
The committee passed Plante’s motion and then voted to recommend council approve the demolition.
Somerset Coun. Ariel Troster noted that the demise of the St. Patrick Street buildings is hardly an isolated case. She said her west downtown ward has similarly “egregious” examples of heritage properties demolished by neglect.
“It’s a real blight on the downtown core, and it really contravenes our heritage policies,” she said. “So we have to figure out how to do better with this, because to end up in this place is so unfortunate.
“I don’t think anyone’s disputing that these properties need to come down now,” Troster added. “But they didn’t have to come down a few years ago, and they didn’t just fall apart on their own.”