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- Thread starter AlvinofDiaspar
- Start date
rdaner
Senior Member
ARB
New Member
About the townhouses on the south side of Wellesley west of Parliament.
www.thestar.com
Toronto is in a housing crisis. Why are these city-owned historic row houses sitting empty?
The rotting buildings are home to termites and a pigeon. Here’s why the city of Toronto hasn’t fixed them up yet despite a housing crisis.
www.thestar.com
Northern Light
Superstar
About the townhouses on the south side of Wellesley west of Parliament.
Toronto is in a housing crisis. Why are these city-owned historic row houses sitting empty?
The rotting buildings are home to termites and a pigeon. Here’s why the city of Toronto hasn’t fixed them up yet despite a housing crisis.
While many of us here would disagree with @HousingNowTO on the value of the heritage here.........
We would all agree that leaving this site to rot for years, plural.......not even delivering expensive, private sector housing, just letting the heritage rot and the site remain vacant is completely and utterly unacceptable.
Supposedly, a single tenant remained here as late as late year and that was there excuse for not doing any work, and not even having assessed the buildings to determine work needed.
Absurd, and offensive.
I question whether this site makes sense as affordable housing, given that it either be shelter space (where need proper apartments far more); or it would be handful of live-in units at great cost.
I'm open to considering affordable here, but I think the better play might be a deal with a developer to restore the heritage, they can rent/sell as higher end housing, live/work or offices........ and the net proceeds from the sale go into affordable housing elsewhere.
Perhaps into address Swansea Mews....or the desperately needed investments at Dan Harrison.
Or to keep it hyper local, they could use the proceeds to buy additional affordable housing in the Parliament Square proposal, should that ever move forward.
I'm concerned that if the City retains this, any heritage work will take double the time and triple the dollars and fritter away resources for affordable housing while this project dithers on.....
T3G
Senior Member
Only tangentially related to the neighbourhood, but does know of any other locales in the city where rowhomes in that general architectural style can be found? ^
AlbertC
Superstar
From the article:
In terms of the Second Empire roof style, mixed in with the more typical Toronto bay and gables pitched roof, I'd say you can find a good amount of them in Cabbagetown, or specifically in the Carlton and Parliament part of it.
You can also likely find them in areas like the Annex or the sidestreets of Chinatown. Here's a batch of them around Dundas & Beverley:
T3G
Senior Member
^Fantastic, looks like I gotta go for a walk. Loving the ones at Dundas and Beverly especially. Thanks!
ARB
New Member
Activity of some kind at the 265-275 Wellesley E site. Yellow fencing is new, and there's assorted piles of brickwork debris and empty mortar bags that weren't there before.
EBT
Active Member
I found this information online:
Scope of Work
Good to see this moving ahead after being boarded up for years.
- Permit Number: 22 184921 BLD
- Permit Type: Small Residential Projects
- Application Date: August 2, 2022
- Status: Examiner's Notice Sent (which means it's in the review stage or awaiting further documentation)
- Estimated Construction Cost: $3,400,000
- Structure Type: Other
- Current Use: Multiple Unit Residential Dwelling
- Proposed Use: Same — Multiple Unit Residential Dwelling
Scope of Work
- Renovation of existing townhomes currently used as rooming houses
- Demolition and reconstruction of structurally unsound rear addition walls
- Interior renovations, new plumbing and HVAC
- New rear south and east walls
- New basement walk-out to rear yard
- New windows, heritage façade restoration
- New front steps and landscaping
Good to see this moving ahead after being boarded up for years.
ARB
New Member
Thank you for the info, EBT! Agreed that it's nice to finally see something happening there.