Toronto's King Street castle is no more — and locals aren't happy about it
Heritage buildings may have to be sacrificed in favour of affordable homes, housing advocate says
A local landmark at King Street and Strachan Avenue has been razed, raising concerns among neighbours about whether the city's doing enough to protect heritage structures.
The turreted, 135-year-old Palace Arms Hotel is scheduled to be reconstructed using many of the structure's original materials — one of the conditions the city placed on the developer in exchange for permission to tear down the heritage hotel.
But a rebuild of the original is cold comfort to Gene Threndyle, who's lived in the neighbourhood for decades. He wonders whether the city did enough to ensure the hotel was preserved.
"It looked like a little castle ... it did add something to the streetscape," he told CBC Toronto. "There should be more than oversight. There should be a staff that's actually invested in this."
The original Palace Arms Hotel and Tavern was a neighbourhood fixture for over 100 years, according to a 2023 staff report, and has been on the city's list of heritage properties since 1984.
A heritage listing makes any structure in the city challenging — but not impossible — to demolish. The Palace Arms property, owned by a development consortium that includes Greenwin Corp., Intentional Capital and Windsor Private Capital, has been the subject of a redevelopment application since 2018, when the owners revealed plans to redevelop the site.
Council gave the developer the right to build the project on the condition that the Palace's original facade be saved.
In 2021, the consortium unveiled plans for a 14-story mixed use apartment building, to include 231 rental units, 40 of which are to be designated affordable.
However by the end of 2023, it had become apparent to both the developer's consultant, Bousfields Inc., and city planning staff that the brickwork was too far gone to be saved.
"While the demolition/dismantling of a heritage building is regrettable, staff agree with the applicant's heritage consultant that the condition of the masonry does not allow for sufficient retention of original material and would not represent a meaningful conservation treatment of the Palace Arms facades," a city staff report from 2023 says.
Council agreed to switch gears and allow the owners to demolish the building — with some conditions.
The company pledged to salvage and re-use a dozen elements from the original building.
The developers have lived up to all 12 conditions, "either through salvage and reinstatement in the reconstructed building, or through reconstruction," Jocelyn Deeks, a partner with Bousfields, told CBC Toronto in an email.
"The features that have been salvaged and will be reinstated: conical turret roof, the bay window, the stone banding, columns, dentil moulding and lintels, the signage, the pressed metal brackets and cornices, and stained-glass windows," she said.
"The features that will be reconstructed: the historic brick arches and openings, as well as the wood elements."
Adam Wynne, chair of the city's Toronto and East York Community Preservation Panel, said he and other heritage advocates are less than pleased with the outcome.
"I think there is a capacity maybe to have a longer period for dialogue with these projects to find a solution that's more amenable to preservation of the building," he said.
Wynne also said the Palace is not alone. It's just one of several redevelopment projects in which the original structure was completely torn down and replaced, he said, using as many of the building's original materials as possible.
He points to a block of Victorian homes on Shuter Street in the Garden District. The homes were to be fully retained during redevelopment, he said, but were demolished after structural issues were discovered.
On Markham Street, another Victorian home was demolished and rebuilt recently, after issues with the structure and masonry were uncovered. And on Market Street, a heritage building was demolished but rebuilt using the same bricks, retaining some of the structure's heritage attributes.
"Whether the city needs to tighten its policies around the demolition and reconstruction of this type of building - that may be something worth exploring," he said. "There could have been more intensive heritage masonry exploration done for retaining the building in situ rather than the complete demolition and reconstruction."
As much as these older buildings mean to a neighbourhood, rebuilding older heritage properties using salvaged materials is a much more complex process than the average person might think, said Michael McClelland, a heritage architect and member of the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario.
"It really needs to be handled by skilled conservationists," McClelland said of heritage preservation projects generally. "The trades are the most important people."
And while all facets of a heritage revival project are complicated, he says the toughest job is probably rebuilding brick and masonry, because it's so difficult to match the styles that were popular in the past.
Professionals need to assess whether a structure is stable enough to withstand a restoration project; whether a wall, for instance, is so damaged by decades of water that it's no longer salvageable,.
"It's a difficult call to make," McClelland said. "It's also very expensive."
Materials can also be difficult to come by, he said. "There are bricks with rounded corners - they're not made anymore."
Some are arguing that as much as the hotel will be missed, Torontonians need to come to grips with a more pressing problem: The need for housing.
Mark Richardson, with the affordable housing advocacy group HousingNOWTO.com, raises a notion that's unthinkable to many history buffs: Heritage buildings may have to be sacrificed in favour of affordable homes, if the city is serious about providing affordable housing.
"These neighbourhoods have to change and some of these old brick buildings have to go," Richardson told CBC Toronto. "And sometimes they're not going to come back because our choice is ... retain the old bricks or do another half-a-dozen, dozen affordable housing units.
"I'll make that trade every day of the week," he said.
Threndyle says he's on board with the idea that we need housing. But he says there should be room for both new builds and a sense of history on the city's streets.
"We should still have neighbourhoods that are not alienating," he said. "We should still have interesting architecture. We should still have a lively, viable city."
CBC Toronto has reached out to city planning staff for their thoughts on the Palace Arms project. So far they have not responded.
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With files from Farrah Merali