Comment
Press pause
When Council reconvenes next week, among the files they are expected to consider is the creation of a Heritage Conservation District (HCD) in Wellington. Council is urged to defer the decision to the following term for three reasons. 1. It is a big deal; 2. There remain too many questions, and 3. Most folks who will be affected don’t know what is coming toward them.
First, let me be crystal clear, an HCD in Wellington is a worthy goal. We need tools to safeguard our architectural heritage. The character of our village will be tested in the coming decade or two. Development pressures will impact the village core, Main Street ambiance, as well as the edges, including Belleville Road and Loyalist Parkway on both sides. But we need to get it right, meaning property owners captured in the district must be part of creating these new rules.
(Disclosure: I, along with my partner, own two properties within the prescribed HCD area, so my view may be considered accordingly.)
Subsuming individual property rights in favour of the collective right to conserve heritage is a consequential undertaking. Tremendous care must be taken—and seen to be taken. It has farreaching implications on homes and buildings covering a wide swathe of the village from the cemetery at the top of Consecon Street, down to Main Street, up and down West and Narrow Streets, and the length of Main Street from Consecon Street to Belleville Street. (But strangely omitting Noxon, Oak and Second Streets.) Such an undertaking requires clear and demonstrated public participation. This hasn’t been done yet.
It is an ambitious plan. Wellington’s draft HCD covers 240 properties—in a village with only about 1,000 homes. Perth has about half as many protected structures in its HCD, in a town several times larger. Port Perry has 60. Bath, a proximate-sized village, has just nine properties captured in its heritage protections. Picton has 138 properties in its HCD. Why so ambitious in Wellington?
Perhaps the most worrisome bit is that the HCD creates the perverse incentive to invest on the edges, including a strip mall canyon up Belleville Street, rather than the core. The HCD proposes a broad range of restrictions to the village’s core—but speaks not-at-all about the edges. Why is that? Why not do both?
Nor is it clear that the 240 property owners understand what the HCD means. Many will have to navigate a thicket of new regulations to make significant changes to the exterior of their building. A minor alteration may get waved on through. Bigger changes, however, may require approval from Shire Hall, Prince Edward Heritage Advisory Committee, and Council. Property owners may have to hire a heritage consultant to make a case for alteration. None of this guarantees that rehabilitation or reconstruction will be approved. It all adds costs and uncertainty. In uncertain times.
Few folks know what is coming their way. It is also a powerful bit of legislation. The HCD trumps all other municipal plans and regulations, including Wellington’s Secondary Plan. Where the HCD contradicts the Secondary Plan, for example, the HCD is law.
I remind readers that Wellington’s Secondary Plan process was a hugely successful public process. Many dozens of villagers and neighbours from the surrounding countryside participated in developing and creating our Secondary Plan, conducted over the course of meetings through 2010 and 2011. They saw their community reflected in the plan.
By contrast, few folks participated in the HCD. Fewer know what is in it. In fairness, the draft HCD got started in 2019 and was sidelined during Covid, so it languished for two years. Now, Shire Hall would like to push it across the finish line before the end of the current term of Council.
It should pull back. Council is urged to press pause on the process. Set a new deadline, say, March 2024. Hold proper public meetings. (The process used by IBI in 2010 is as good as any I’ve witnessed over 20 years). Shire Hall must work harder to gain broader public participation. And buy-in. Otherwise, the HCD will struggle for legitimacy.
The HCD is too big, too all-encompassing and too ambitious to push through without proper input from the folks who will have to live with it. Press pause.
Comments (0)