Mayoral candidate George Smitherman says he’d cut taxes for owners of Toronto’s heritage buildings but could take a “punitive approach” against those who fail to keep them in good repair.

Hours before a debate Monday, Aug. 30, on the city’s heritage issues at St. Lawrence Hall, Smitherman stood near a partially-ruined Gould Street building dating from 1888 and said he would promote heritage shopping districts with tax cuts and “residential development guidelines” to preserve neighbourhood character.“We can’t replace these buildings. It’s our obligation therefore to protect them,” the former MPP told reporters on the street, which remained closed behind him months after part of the William Reynolds Block crumbled.

Smitherman said he remembers the “extraordinary row” of mid-19th Century Georgian townhouses on Shuter Street – Walnut Hall – that collapsed in 2007 in what the Heritage Canada Foundation termed “a classic case of demolition by neglect.”

“They just lay dormant and vacant for a long, long time and eventually they met their demise. This was a preventable incident,” said Smitherman, who argues the city needs “real tools that will fight neglect” including an “early warning system” to catch landlords neglecting heritage buildings in time.

Though he pledged as mayor to send the message “heritage matters,” Smitherman said he’d spend “relatively modest dollars” to do it.

The city already has a heritage grant program offering owners matching funds for conservation work on structures.

The Foundation, a national non-profit group, put Walnut Hall on its 2008 Worst Losses List and has also placed on its annual Most Endangered Places lists the former Bata Shoe Headquarters, demolished for a museum in 2007, and the Riverdale Hospital, endangered but still standing. It described both buildings as modernist landmarks.

The group’s current Endangered Places list includes what it calls historic views of the Ontario legislature at Queen’s Park which “will be permanently disfigured” by condominium towers the Ontario Municipal Board approved in May.

Smitherman said he supports a broader definition of what the city includes in heritage programs, and promised “greater consideration” of Toronto’s ravines and other natural features. He said he’d join others, including the current city council, in calling for Rouge Park to be made a national park.

He added he was “pretty sure” he could convince the province, which technically owns the park’s vast lands, to take necessary steps if the federal government accepts the Rouge proposal.

- Mike Adler

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