Thursday, December 17, 2009

Heritage: More on 7 Austin Terrace

BELLEVUE, WASHINGTON - Long-time readers of this blog may remember a piece done back in September on 7 Austin Terrace in Toronto, Ontario near Casa Loma. The 1922 building, built for John B. Maclean, the founder of what has become Maclean's magazine, was in limbo, with an unknown developer proposing to remove it in favor of much taller condos using apparently-sneaky tactics, and the community having difficulty figuring out what to do about the situation.

I was contacted yesterday in reference to that old blog post, as it seems that the situation around 7 Austin Terrace is changing. No less than Maclean's has run an article accusing the developer of trying to vandalize the building. As described in the article, many of the heritage features have been removed in an attempt to prevent the city from designating it as a heritage structure. Maclean's identifies the developer in question as John Todd.

Further details revealed by an article in the Toronto Star seem consistent with this interpretation. Thanks to the authority of the Ontario Municipal Board, there appears to be nothing that the city of Toronto can do; Todd has won.

For those who wish to boycott Todd's other developments, there appears to be a partial list on one of his other companies' web sites.

Further developments will likely be tracked at the Heritage Toronto and Toll Keeper's Cottage web sites.

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