Listée dans le top 10 des édifices les plus menacés au Canada en 2010 selon Héritage Canada, cette résidence construite en 1886 et exposée aux intempéries suite à sa démolition partielle en 1986 sera possiblement démolie sous peu puisqu’une résolution qui autorise sa démolition a en effet été adoptée à cette fin le 8 novembre dernier.
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Speculators deliberatly neglect buildings for years in order to make a case for demolition. Remedy for this abuse is amply covered by by-laws in Montrea. The City has the power (and implicitly, the responsibility) to repair affected buildings. The costs become a lein against the value of the property. Infamously, Montreal uses the power rarely and only when apartment buildings containing poor people are affected. The Redpath building is in no worse a state than the heritage properties on rue de Sebastopol which were rehabilitated in the late nineties after thirty years of abandonement. The owners of the Redpath house have not only been allowed to hurt all of the nearby residents for years, they are being rewarded with a zoning busting permit to build a building with three extra stories, a gift which increases the price for which the property can be sold by at least 50 per cent. The possible number of 1800 square foot condos on the site has been grown from eight or ten to twelve or eighteeen. The actual plans have not been published. The by-law allowing this damage to the town planning rules and basic decency speaks of allowing a building with a floor area ratio of three on a ten thousand square foot lot. The by-law states that the value of the investment is estimated at 15 million dollars. Profits like this on land values for no work are uncommon today. An especially compliant borough council should be held responsible by electors. They have contradicted their responsibilities in this case. It is to be hoped that local residents will be able to convince their neighbours not to sign waivers of their rights to a referendum on the rezoning, the only hope of stopping this travesty of local authority acting badly.