Mad dash underway to protect heritage buildings by end of 2024

It didn't take long for a City of Ottawa committee to vote in favour of designating the exterior of a century-old apartment complex in Sandy Hill as a heritage building on Tuesday.

After all, the former École St-Pierre at 353 Friel St. was built in the Edwardian Classicist style in 1906 — with an addition in 1930 — was designed by a local architect and was the community's first French-language school.

The file checks many of the boxes needed for this sort of protection including age, design, and cultural and historical significance for the central neighbourhood that's one of the city's oldest. 

But Tuesday's designation by the built heritage committee, which still needs approval by full city council and is subject to appeal, is just the beginning of a municipal mad dash to protect thousands of heritage buildings by the end of 2024.

Provincial legislation passed last November to speed up building more homes, known as Bill 23, gives Ontario municipalities until the end of 2024 to designate properties on their heritage registries.

If a building isn't designated by then, the building can't return to the heritage registry for another five years.

There are 4,600 properties on Ottawa's heritage registry that are identified as having some heritage interest, a list that council approved in 2019 and includes the former school on Friel Street.

"It's going to be massively difficult," said committee chair Coun. Rawlson King of the job facing the city's heritage staff over the next 22 months.

He said the Ontario government's changes to heritage rules have created "a very untenable situation."

Heritage staff are working on a report that is expected to come to council in the spring to more fully explain the potential consequences of Bill 23 on the city's heritage properties. 

"I agree with community members, politically, who said that they see this as a gutting of the potential for heritage preservation and that gutting does not assist with the creation of new housing, ultimately, in the province," King told CBC.

City will have to triage

Lesley Collins, the city's program manager for heritage planning, said staff and council will have to decide how to prioritize what buildings get designated heritage.

Staff will look at properties with a higher threat of being demolished because they are in the areas with increased development, or whether a building represents a type of architecture or history that needs protecting.

Unfortunately, we're not going to be able to save everything that probably should be saved.- Lesley Collins, city's program manager of heritage planning

"One of the pieces we really wanted to look at is what stories are we telling," said Collins. "How do we highlight some of the more underrepresented stories that we haven't told through our current designations?

"Unfortunately, we're not going to be able to save everything that probably should be saved."

King said he fears the heritage department doesn't have enough resources for the enormous job of handling thousands of potential heritage sites over such a short period of time.

He is arguing for more heritage planners "to ensure that we really preserve our heritage in a wider way."

The draft budget currently calls for the city's heritage planning department's budget to shrink by $26,000 in 2023. 

The planning budget, which includes the heritage department, is set to be debated on Wednesday. The full budget is going to council on March 1.