The first stage of the city's plan to impose heritage protections in Hespeler's core won council's endorsement last week.
The study, by Trace Architectures, established a boundary that captures 309 properties and sets the stage to create a plan and guideline for the Hespeler Core Heritage Conservation District (HCD) before final approval next year.
When that happens, the Hespeler HCD will become the city's fourth HCD, behind one still pending in Galt and the 20 year old Blair and Dickson Hill HCDs.
Their goal is to conserve and protect the "wealth of high-value" buildings and landscapes that are an integral part of the city's identity.
But not everyone is a fan of the tool that imposes blanket protections over neighbourhoods deemed to have high concentrations of historical buildings, in some cases against the wishes of property owners.
Cambridge architect Patrick Simmons is one of them.
The owner of two designated heritage properties in Galt doesn't believe the public is aware of all the implications that come with HCDs, particularly when it comes to how it plays into development delays and skyrocketing housing costs.
The problem with HCDs, he says, is they often capture properties that don't warrant protection, in many cases forcing developers, business owners and homeowners to jump through extra hoops to get anything built.
He calls the city's understanding of architecture and the cultural value of its heritage buildings "abysmal" and says the recent push to meet a provincial deadline for heritage protections is "a ridiculous scramble" that will end up doing more harm than good.
"To our on-going detriment, this subject, like design in general, is given no place in our civic discourse,“ he says.
In Hespeler, 224 of the properties within the boundary meet two of nine criteria needed to warrant heritage protection while 44 don't meet any heritage criteria at all.
One of those is 241 Queen St. W. where a Guelph-based developer wants to build a multi-residential highrise neighbourhood with as many as 1,500 to 1,800 units south of the textile mill.
In a letter opposed to its inclusion last week, Lammer Development Group says it bought the empty property from the city in 1987 with the intention to build a 260-unit housing development.
They don't believe inclusion in the HCD serves any purpose and now that its plans have ballooned in scope, the fear is an HCD will put up another roadblock in front its effort to bring more housing to Cambridge.
Simmons agrees and says it's no surprise the province and municipalities are being blamed for the housing crisis when you consider what developers have to wade through to get anything built these days.
"Years and years of negotiations and, frankly, delaying tactics by city hall," says the architect behind projects that include Gaslight District, the Breithaupt Block in Kitchener, and the Cambridge Mill condo and hotel towers.
The city, on the other hand, contends HCDs aren't an impediment to growth but instead strike a balance that takes into account the city's desire to maintain not only buildings, but the character of surrounding neighbourhoods.
The city recognizes some properties within an HCD have minimal heritage value and are good candidates for redevelopment where possible.
Senior heritage planner Jeremy Parsons says HCDs don't freeze an area or building in the past, it simply provides a tool to help guide the change that will happen in these areas.
"District plans provide guidance for redevelopment so developers and homeowners know where to start in terms of what can be approved," he says.
HCDs, he adds, have become the most important tool the city has as it works to assess the heritage value of more than 660 properties before the province wipes the slate clean on January 1, 2027.
When that date arrives, all protections granted by municipal heritage registers will disappear.
The move was announced two years ago as part of Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act, as a way to give developers a clearer path to build in places where heritage protections are considered an impediment to growth.
Any property on a heritage register gets a 60-day reprieve from the wrecking ball if a demolition application comes through and enough time for municipalities to consider a heritage designation.
The fear is if nothing replaces it, important links to our past could end up in piles of rubble.
Some of those links might not even be known.
Architecture Conservancy of Ontario Chair Diane Chin called the deadline "draconian and totally unrealistic" in a letter sent to the premier last spring urging the province to extend the original 2025 deadline to 2030.
In an interview with CambridgeToday in April, manager of policy planning for the City of Cambridge Joan Jylanne said getting an extension was critical to the city’s efforts to preserve properties deemed worthy of heritage protection.
Facing considerable pressure from dozens of municipalities including Cambridge, the province announced the new deadline in May.
Two additional years makes the job more feasible but it's recognized that even five or 10 years won't be enough time for heritage planning staff to review all properties on the city's heritage register.
Cambridge typically completes three or four designations a year, Jylanne says.
HCDs allow blanket protections to be established quickly, giving the city greater powers to protect buildings at risk by demanding heritage assessments.
The city ran into its own rules last month when it moved to demolish a home at the corner of Townline and Blackbridge roads to make way for a canoe launch, parking lot and trail stop.
After expropriating the property for $1.3 million, the city had to undertake a heritage impact assessment, historic building assessment and salvage plan on the house prior to demolition because the property is within the Black Bridge Cultural Heritage Landscape and adjacent to the designated Blackbridge mill.
Tallied up, those studies cost taxpayers just over $30,000 to determine the home has minimal heritage value.
Parsons says that kind of expense isn't common. HIAs would typically be all that's required of a developer asking for a demolition permit and those range from the low end of $6,000 to a the high end of $12,000.
But homeowners and home buyers in an HCD should expect added costs if they want to tear something down.
A home recently listed for sale as a tear down at 135 Queen Street East in Hespeler is within the proposed HCD boundary.
If the Hespeler HCD is in place when and if a demolition permit gets filed with the city, more costs are likely in store for a new owner.
The same could happen in any one of the city's HCDs.
In some cases, opposition to a demolition permit could come out of the blue as was the case with the building at 44-46 Park Hill Road last fall.
A developer's plan to demolish the derelict brick "workers' cottage" for a 10-unit, mixed-use apartment will now be decided at the Ontario Land Tribunal after council blocked the proposal based on the idea the building is culturally and historically significant.
That was more than nine months after heritage planning staff reviewed a plan to develop the property and stated there were no concerns.
When the application for the demo permit triggered a fresh look, the property owner was blindsided with a notice of the city's intention to designate the building.
Claims the developer should have done his homework don't apply in that case because the property wasn't on the city's heritage register and is outside of the planned boundary for the Galt Core HCD.
That, says Simmons, is what's so "incredibly unfair" about HCDs.
It doesn't take much digging to come up with some reason to save any building of that vintage, he says.
Jylanne admits it's a risk that comes with buying an older property in a city with close to 200 years of history.
It's not the city's job to do that homework for developers, she says.
Without protections, the character defining aspects of our community that have taken hundreds of years to evolve, can be lost forever in a very short time, she says.
The city's goal is to manage growth and development so that housing and other needs are met in concert with the protection of natural and cultural heritage resources.
