{"id":9636,"date":"2010-03-01T09:30:40","date_gmt":"2010-03-01T14:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=9636"},"modified":"2010-02-27T16:59:04","modified_gmt":"2010-02-27T21:59:04","slug":"brantfords-downtown-destruction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2010\/03\/01\/brantfords-downtown-destruction\/","title":{"rendered":"Brantford&#8217;s downtown destruction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/9\/9e\/Brantford_Ontario_Colborne_Street_1.jpg\/800px-Brantford_Ontario_Colborne_Street_1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>Brantford city council recently voted to demolish three blocks of heritage buildings in the city&#8217;s downtown. Guest columnist Nigel Terpstra, of <a href=\"http:\/\/urbantoronto.ca\/\">Urban Toronto<\/a>, sent us this post about the situation.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Recently, the city of Brantford, Ontario announced its plans to demolish and remove forty-one structures from the south side of Colborne Street, in the heart of its historic downtown.\u00a0 The structures themselves date from 1850 to 1915 with the section stretching from 115 to 139 Colborne comprising one of the longest surviving collections of pre-confederation buildings in Canada.\u00a0 They represent a wide variety of architectural styles from the Beaux Arts of The Right House (1870), to the Georgian of The Shannon Building (1867), to the Edwardian of the Dominion House Furnishings Company (1915).\u00a0 Within that range are also included a number of Renaissance Revival, Second Empire and even Art Deco structures, all of which were created at different times, for different clients with different needs. They could very soon all be reduced to rubble.\u00a0\u00a0 <!--more-->Urbanites and heritage buffs recoil in horror at this prospect \u2013 surely in 2010 we don\u2019t do these sorts of things &#8211; but the unfortunate reality is that we do and we are.\u00a0 It does not take a great knowledge of history to understand that it was exactly this sort of \u2018bulldoze and rebuild\u2019 attitude which claimed the downtowns of countless North American cities in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.\u00a0 Instead of the glassy, modern towers which were supposed to replace the heavy, masonry structures of the past, economies changed, money went elsewhere, and cities were left with gaping holes, both physical and psychological, from which many have yet to recover.<\/p>\n<p>Brantford\u2019s mayor, Mike Hancock, seems to see things differently, arguing that the buildings\u2019 demolition would &#8220;\u2026give our downtown new life.&#8221;\u00a0 There is an argument to be made for regenerative structures &#8212; at times, tearing away a small number of older buildings and replacing them with something a community needs is an effective way to bring people in and reinvigorate \u2018dead\u2019 space.\u00a0 To this end, Brantford City Councillor Mark Littell has promised that the land will be put to good use by the YMCA of Hamilton-Burlington-Brantford in partnership with Mohawk College, Wilfrid Laurier University and Nipissing University, all of whom want to build an athletics facility for community and postsecondary use on about a third of the site.\u00a0 But what, then, of the other two-thirds?<\/p>\n<p>Both the mayor and the town\u2019s councillors seem to believe that developers will flock to the newly vacated space, but the chances of this happening are slim.\u00a0 Furthermore, when the older structures are torn down, the individual parcels of land upon which they stood will be too small to be developed on their own and will therefore be bundled into bigger and more profitable tracts.\u00a0\u00a0 The buildings which will be built on these new lots will also be larger and will contain fewer opportunities for individual retailers to establish themselves, changing scale of the street completely.\u00a0 It seems therefore, that what we are faced with is less the surgical removal of a specific set of structures in an effort to revive a larger precinct, than the clear cutting of three blocks at the whim of a pro-development city council.<\/p>\n<p>Some may argue that the buildings are decaying, damaged or are of questionable structural integrity, but a 2005 fire department inspection revealed that the roofs were sound, the basements dry and the walls free of cracks.\u00a0 Furthermore, a 1995 report by the South Side of Colborne Street Task Force confirmed that the buildings themselves were not to blame, stating: \u201cThe problems along Colborne Street have emerged over an extended period of time and are the result of a wide variety of factors.\u00a0 There is not an instantaneous cure for these problems.\u00a0 The improvement of the street will be the result of incremental improvements to existing buildings and to the surrounding area.\u201d\u00a0 Sage advice indeed, but why then, fifteen years on, are we considering the destruction of these buildings in the face of both the reports of heritage experts and more broadly, the lessons of history?<\/p>\n<p>It is no secret that Brantford spent some years in decline after the bankruptcies of its two major employers, White Farm Equipment and Massey-Ferguson, forced thousands out of work.\u00a0 Colborne Street suffered heavy losses during this period as retailers and services left when business dried up.\u00a0 In the last ten years however, the city\u2019s unemployment rate halved and new life has begun to take hold.\u00a0 What better way to solidify this success than by regenerating the city\u2019s core to its former glory?\u00a0 Instead, Brantford has chosen to destroy, getting rid of the old structures as if they were bad memories.<\/p>\n<p>Brantford must realize that the position it is in is not unique, but the decisions its councillors and mayor make could set the city apart from others who have traveled the same path.\u00a0 It is exactly this sort of \u201cdumb and ordinary,\u201d \u201cmessy vitality,\u201d to quote two urban visionaries of the twentieth century, Robert Venturi and Jane Jacobs, that we have come to appreciate and cherish in the wake of countless failed experiments akin to the one upon which Brantford seems determined to embark.\u00a0 In this sense, the derelict heterogeneity of Colborne Street\u2019s current condition is itself the best template for true revival and a catalyst around which the whole city should rally.<\/p>\n<p><em>Image from <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/File:Brantford_Ontario_Colborne_Street_1.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">Wikipedia Commons: Balcer<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brantford city council recently voted to demolish three blocks of heritage buildings in the city&#8217;s downtown. Guest columnist Nigel Terpstra, of Urban Toronto, sent us this post about the situation. Recently, the city of Brantford, Ontario announced its plans to demolish and remove forty-one structures from the south side of Colborne Street, in the heart<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2010\/03\/01\/brantfords-downtown-destruction\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;Brantford&#8217;s downtown destruction&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4074,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22,24],"tags":[12525,14436,457,14443,424,408,14444,5302,504,14438,426,14437,14440,11976,14441,636,21,9857,14442,19,14445,14439],"class_list":["post-9636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-history","tag-brantford","tag-brantford-city","tag-canada","tag-colborne-street-task-force","tag-columnist","tag-councillor","tag-dominion-house-furnishings-company","tag-freemasonry","tag-jane-jacobs","tag-mark-littell","tag-mayor","tag-mike-hancock","tag-mohawk-college","tag-nigel-terpstra","tag-nipissing-university","tag-ontario","tag-other-cities","tag-robert-venturi","tag-the-shannon-building","tag-toronto","tag-white-farm-equipment","tag-wilfrid-laurier-university"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Brantford&#039;s downtown destruction - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2010\/03\/01\/brantfords-downtown-destruction\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Brantford&#039;s downtown destruction - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Brantford city council recently voted to demolish three blocks of heritage buildings in the city&#8217;s downtown. Guest columnist Nigel Terpstra, of Urban Toronto, sent us this post about the situation. 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