Item - 2019.PB11.8

The Toronto Preservation Board deferred consideration of the item until its December 2, 2019 meeting.

This report recommends that City Council include 16 properties identified in Recommendation 1 of this report on the City of Toronto's Heritage Register. The properties are located within the Don Mills Crossing Cultural Heritage Resource Assessment (CHRA) study area.

As part of the Don Mills Crossing Study, which resulted in the Don Mills Secondary Plan (Official Plan Amendment 404), City Planning initiated a CHRA to ensure that all properties of cultural heritage value or interest were appropriately identified, understood and conserved as part of an up-to-date planning framework. The planning framework is supported by analysis of the broader context through a number of component studies, including the CHRA, to enable a thorough review of the area context. The CHRA Study Area (noted as ‘Study Area’ within this report) includes properties currently located between Leslie Street to the west, Barber Greene Road and Green Belt Drive to the north, and the Canadian National Railway line to the south and east.

The CHRA identified a collection of company headquarters, institutional and clean industrial buildings constructed between 1950 and 1975 whose Modernist design, low-rise scale, and landscaped settings linked together by a series of curvilinear roads has resulted in a unique cultural heritage landscape informed by the Garden City principles combined with Modernist architecture style. This approach to architecture and a generous landscaped setting was fundamental to the planning of Don Mills. The CHRA also identified housing that responded to the principles of incorporating Modernist architecture in a landscaped setting.

All of these properties meet Ontario Regulation 9/06, the provincial criteria prescribed for municipal designation, which the City also applies when assessing properties for its Heritage Register. Properties on the City's Heritage Register will be conserved and maintained in accordance with the Official Plan Heritage Policies.