The Shannondale (née Electrohome, 152 Shanley St) | 8 fl | U/C

[welltoldtales]

Hence why I think this story should be massive. It should be posted everywhere about how broken our property, zoning, capitalism and city planning is. Well intentioned laws are being abused for personal gain at the expense of every citizen. $800,000 is not chump change. If this demolition joins this massive tax arrears he will be taking even more. Not to mention that I imagine he is getting some massive discount on his taxes because this thing is empty. While he drives around in a sportscar. It makes me sick.

Because of the Tax issues too the city can't expropriate the land either. they have the next month to do so but how awful would that look. Sell it for 457,000 and then buy it back from 650,000. While losing 800,000 in between. We're so screwed on this...

This isn't really a problem caused by zoning rules, or by capitalism, or by poor city planning, even if all of those have their own issues.

This is a problem caused by a poorly-designed tax sales process governed by the Municipal Act, which prevents municipalities from effectively controlling the process.

The core of capitalism is private ownership. The issue with the electrohome building is two fold.

1) we allowed a private enterprise to dispose of dangerous contamination unchecked
2) the Municipal Act tax sales process is actually well thought out but at it's core seeks to defend individual, private ownership of property. Capitalists were worried that Municipalities and government would expropriate large amounts of land and "steal" private enterprises of value. So we enshrined their rights and ensured that tax sales wouldn't be a new means to acquire property from land owners.

Expropriations are very costly and difficult for this reason. Cities have to show clear plans in terms of how they want to acquire property to protect property owners. In the document released by the city as well:

"Legislation limits the city’s ability to gain access to buildings on private property and it was only after an inspector observed conditions that could put the public at risk was the city able to request that an engineer be retained to assess the condition of the building. April 18 was the first time city officials have been allowed in the building since 2013, and we are taking immediate steps to deal with this property based on what was observed during that visit, as identified by an independent engineer."

"2014 – Present – City staff repeatedly request access to the building to conduct follow up inspections. No unsafe condition identified; access not provided by property owner." 

As for zoning, you later mention why wouldn't they zoning, they had an industrial building surrounded by a neighbourhood and then have had all sorts of issues figuring out what to do with the space to make it more acceptable.

At the core of that is poor city planning. Those early days we had so many mixed use neighbourhoods and that is great but time showed that maybe having a factory like this so close to housing wasn't the best idea. I don't think they city or others understood the effects of trichloroethylene. 

The contamination is actively being avoided. There's huge worries it has spread throughout the nieghbourhood and no one wants to unearth that. Some have suggested that remediation will require the destruction of much of the neighbouring block. You wouldn't just have to purchase the electrohome but also all of the neighbouring buildings which would be destroyed. That's also a city planning thing.

This building has been like this since 2011. If the city is forced to demolish the building they will add it to his tax sale bill. He is almost certainly going to let the city do that because he is a deadbeat. The cost to demolish will once again make the prospect of selling the property as part of a tax sale nearly impossible and then... We'll be back here. He'll get himself another massive discount on the price or some sort of agreement to avoid most of the cost of the tax bill and then maybe he can flip the empty land. I mean at this point he would be silly not to anticipate another 70% discount on the cost of the demolition. 

All he needs to do is sit on it and he has already done that for 8 years. What's another 4?