Heritage champions: collaborating on preservation

NRU
May 18, 2016
By Leah Wong

Local governments and developers both have an important role to play in ensuring that heritage preservation is a priority as municipalities grow and that adaptive reuse leads to spinoff economic benefits.

Development champions willing to take on the risk associated with repurposing heritage buildings are needed if our communities’ history is to be preserved, City of Guelph councillor Leanne Piper told participants of this year’s Ontario Heritage Conference in Stratford. And municipalities can reduce some risk that developers face by creating incentives to make these projects more feasible, Perimeter Development founding partner Craig Beattie told participants.

“We see the key components to help those projects come together as having a great working relationship with the [municipalities] right through from planning to heritage to the building department,” said Beattie.

He added that being able to have municipal staff come to a site with his team and walk the building creates a more collaborative project. This makes it easier to work through some of the challenges associated with restoring a heritage building.

“The financial setting also has to work. These projects more times than not are going to be over budget, just by way of their nature and...surprises along the way,” said Beattie. He said without having incentives from municipalities it would not be financially feasible to modernize and extend the life of these buildings.

This is the case with the Breithaupt Block project, which Perimeter acquired in 2009. The project transformed a former car parts factory into a large office complex that serves as the Canadian headquarters for Google. First came the restoration of a 130,000 sq. ft . brick-and-beam space, then a three-storey glass box was added to the 1950s era two-storey industrial building.

Piper said in Guelph the use of tax increment grants has proven to be a successful way to encourage heritage projects.

These include brownfield project grants, facade improvement grants and major downtown and minor downtown activation grants.

Developer Tyrcathlen Partners is accessing the city’s tax increment grants for the redevelopment of the Petrie Building in Guelph. The building has a stamped, galvanized sheetmetal facade with ornamentation from 1882 - it’s the only intact machine-stamped building of its time left in Canada.

Tyrcathlen principal Kirk Roberts said an adjacent building has been acquired and the two buildings will be “knit together” to create a new building.

Roberts said it has had support from the city, which has been vital to making this project feasible.

“We’ve been pretty open about what our financial intentions were...With this project we just needed to find a way to make it work,” said Roberts. He added that the city has supported this project through a number of grants. “The economics of this building made zero sense if we couldn’t build really creative partnerships.”

Now that the financial tools are in place Tyrcathlen has started to find tenants that want to be actively involved in the redesign of the building’s interior. One of these tenants is opening Brothers Ale House, a nano-brewery on the building’s ground floor.

Structural facade improvements for the building are funded. However, the developer is seeking additional funds to replace sheet-metal ornamentation that hangs on top of the facade, almost like a mural. Tyrcathlen is working with the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario to crowdsource donations so that it can replace the decoration that overtime has been lost from the facade.

Piper said champions such as Roberts have played an important role in Guelph. They show other developers and the public that maintaining heritage buildings can have a positive economic impact.

Municipalities can also set an example for developers by maintaining their own heritage assets. Piper noted that in Guelph there have been cases where municipally-owned heritage buildings have been neglected and needed to be demolished.

“It sets a really bad example for the development community, private property owners and homeowners if we’re not looking after our own heritage [assets],” said Piper.