Robert Smythe
As heritage-adjacent developments go, it’s a honking big project. A full block of historic buildings on downtown Bank Street is to be rehabilitated with fully restored façades and street level storefronts, surmounted by a new nine-storey apartment building.
The site, on the east side of Bank between Nepean and Lisgar Streets, currently comprises four distinct structures all dating from the decades to either side of 1900. Two are mixed-use residential and two commercial.
Rezoning and site plan applications have been submitted by Smart Living Properties, which until now has primarily been a Sandy Hill-based developer specializing in dramatic renovations of or additions to existing buildings. Its projects have frequently been controversial because of the large number of renovictions involved.
The project’s heritage consultants are Commonwealth Historic Resource Management Inc., and the project is being designed by Woodman Architect & Associates Ltd.
The city summarizes the proposal as: “The existing buildings will be retained and serve as the podium of a residential addition stepped back from the [historic] building[s’] edges.” The residential building will contain 263 units, mostly bachelor units with a sprinkling of one, two, or three-bedroom apartments. A height increase from 19 to 29.17 metres is being sought.
All but one of the existing street level spaces fronting Bank would remain commercial. The ground floor of the finest of the historic buildings, originally constructed as an early movie theatre, would serve as the principal entrance to the apartment levels above.
Because of site constraints, communal amenity areas are limited to indoors on the ground floor, and the podium and ninth-floor rooftops. Finally, there’s a whopping 434 bicycle parking spaces in the basement. Although the city’s summary states that “on-site vehicular parking is proposed,” none is evident on the plans, and there are no fixed requirements to provide any car parking for this development.
Is it possible to mix old and new?
How is it possible to locate a massive new building directly above a collection of elderly structures?
The heritage consultants promise that: “Smart Living plans to restore the buildings’ exterior façades, replicating missing elements of the ground floor retail shopfronts and enhancing the existing upper heritage façades.
“The current planned approach for the rehabilitation of four buildings is to seismically upgrade each of the buildings by restoring existing elements and adding new structural elements to improve the lateral load path of the building and reduce load demands.”
Sounds complicated. Most developers would chose to demolish all but the historic façades, keeping them up with bracing as a new building is constructed behind. And, in fact, drawings for external shoring are appended.
The applicant contends that the new building is very sympathetic “in its overall design… [and] considers proportions, architectural ratios and elements that are of similar language to the heritage buildings below.” This is difficult to see because the new addition lands on top of the historic properties with a thud.
But anyone willing to take on such a challenge should be allowed to foster such illusions.
Replacing a small worker’s cottage – enough peakiness?
At the other end of the spectrum, the “small” that was promised in the headline.
On February 14, the Built Heritage Committee approved the demolition of a small worker’s cottage at 41 Arlington Avenue. Although it was somewhat derelict, this building was designated for protection by virtue of its being in the Centretown Heritage Conservation District.
The developer gave a tied-up-in-knots rationale for replacing the old building with a three-storey flat roofed structure.
“Arlington Avenue is defined by consistent grouping of two to two-and-a-half storey gable-front dwellings constructed at the turn of the 20th century. The subject property’s heritage character is heavily eroded, and its contextual value is limited to its form and scale, which [will] be replaced through an appropriately designed new building. Although the subject dwelling is historically linked to its surroundings, its contribution to the character of the streetscape no longer stems from its heritage character and its contextual value is accordingly low.”
To its credit, the new building adds eight “very small” (according to the developer) units to the area, although you will have to decide if the defining heritage character of this block of Arlington – peaked-roof gabled-fronted two-storey houses – has really been honoured with the replacement building’s slight gesture to peakiness.