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

[tomh009]

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.

[ijmorlan]

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...

Why can’t they expropriate? I find it hard to believe that not paying my taxes would make me immune from expropriation. I mean, if there was a road or something that needed to be punched through the neighbourhood I can’t believe it would have to go around the property just because of this tax issue.

Of course, my house is actually worth something, so it’s a bit different situation.

[tomh009]

Expropriation is a while different set of rules than tax sale. I don't know what the criteria are for doing an expropriation, though.

I'm thinking we should petition this city to change the zoning on this property to allow ONLY affordable/income-geared housing.

[Smore]

The site is among the most contaminated in the Region.  There are offsite impacts that the owner (and new future owners) are responsible for unless other arrangements are made.  The city doesnt want to be that owner ( no kidding!) And neither does anyone else until at least the off site responsibilities are removed from the equation.  The Ministry of the Environment holds those cards...

[jeffster]

The site is among the most contaminated in the Region.  There are offsite impacts that the owner (and new future owners) are responsible for unless other arrangements are made.  The city doesnt want to be that owner ( no kidding!) And neither does anyone else until at least the off site responsibilities are removed from the equation.  The Ministry of the Environment holds those cards...

To make it worthwhile, you would need to demolish the building, fight the "Save the Clock Tower" people, fight city hall (though I have no idea what it's zoned for), fight the NIMBY's, and fight LPAT. You need to probably dig fairly far down, so lots of shoring up, so only a really tall apartment building or condo for the payoff. By tall, I mean at least 20-25 floors minimum. The clean-up job will be in the millions.

I am not interested in this property. Not worth the headaches.

[tomh009]

It's a 0.35ha property, easily worth $3-4M once it's been remediated. Were there no existing building, remediation cost would likely be in the $500K to $2M range, but no one will really know until they check the soil contamination, which the current owner has not done.

It may be that it's not realistic to save the existing building. And it may be that development would be complex. But that does not excuse the behaviour of the current owners to date.

[jeffster]

It's a 0.35ha property, easily worth $3-4M once it's been remediated. Were there no existing building, remediation cost would likely be in the $500K to $2M range, but no one will really know until they check the soil contamination, which the current owner has not done.

It may be that it's not realistic to save the existing building. And it may be that development would be complex. But that does not excuse the behaviour of the current owners to date.

I think remediation is going to be much higher than $2M. But that's not the only cost of that, you also have legal costs and a lot of other costs. As for the current owner, I have no idea what they're thinking, as it makes no sense for them to have repurchased the property.

My granddad worked for GE, and the chemicals they used were insane. I imagine Electrohome had the same type of chemicals, like PCB's. This stuff would have likely seeped fairly deep into the ground. And I think that ground contamination might be much greater than we know. Possibly to the point of under the surrounding homes. I can't even begin to imagine the headache this place is going to give either to the current owner or city. Really sucks of its location.

[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?

[welltoldtales]

It's a 0.35ha property, easily worth $3-4M once it's been remediated. Were there no existing building, remediation cost would likely be in the $500K to $2M range, but no one will really know until they check the soil contamination, which the current owner has not done.

It may be that it's not realistic to save the existing building. And it may be that development would be complex. But that does not excuse the behaviour of the current owners to date.

I think remediation is going to be much higher than $2M. But that's not the only cost of that, you also have legal costs and a lot of other costs. As for the current owner, I have no idea what they're thinking, as it makes no sense for them to have repurchased the property.

My granddad worked for GE, and the chemicals they used were insane. I imagine Electrohome had the same type of chemicals, like PCB's. This stuff would have likely seeped fairly deep into the ground. And I think that ground contamination might be much greater than we know. Possibly to the point of under the surrounding homes. I can't even begin to imagine the headache this place is going to give either to the current owner or city. Really sucks of its location.

My understanding is that when work was recently being done on Duke Street they found the same contamination. It's definitely much deeper and broader than people realize..

[Chris]

I think remediation is going to be much higher than $2M. But that's not the only cost of that, you also have legal costs and a lot of other costs. As for the current owner, I have no idea what they're thinking, as it makes no sense for them to have repurchased the property.

My granddad worked for GE, and the chemicals they used were insane. I imagine Electrohome had the same type of chemicals, like PCB's. This stuff would have likely seeped fairly deep into the ground. And I think that ground contamination might be much greater than we know. Possibly to the point of under the surrounding homes. I can't even begin to imagine the headache this place is going to give either to the current owner or city. Really sucks of its location.

My understanding is that when work was recently being done on Duke Street they found the same contamination. It's definitely much deeper and broader than people realize..

According to the Ministry of the Environment the contamination stems from a post Electrohome tenant that cut a hole in the foundation and dumped the stuff into the ground. I'm sure Electrohome isn't 100% innocent but I don't think they created the problem the site is dealing with now.

[danbrotherston]

My understanding is that when work was recently being done on Duke Street they found the same contamination. It's definitely much deeper and broader than people realize..

According to the Ministry of the Environment the contamination stems from a post Electrohome tenant that cut a hole in the foundation and dumped the stuff into the ground. I'm sure Electrohome isn't 100% innocent but I don't think they created the problem the site is dealing with now.

Is that tenant in jail?  I would hope so.

[jeffster]

My understanding is that when work was recently being done on Duke Street they found the same contamination. It's definitely much deeper and broader than people realize..

According to the Ministry of the Environment the contamination stems from a post Electrohome tenant that cut a hole in the foundation and dumped the stuff into the ground. I'm sure Electrohome isn't 100% innocent but I don't think they created the problem the site is dealing with now.

Who was there after Electrohome? And were they dumping stuff from Electrohome?

[tomh009]

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.

Yes, it's true that if we (expropriated all land and buildings, and) got rid of private ownership of land and buildings altogether, we would be able to avoid this issue. I can't argue with that.

[Chris]

According to the Ministry of the Environment the contamination stems from a post Electrohome tenant that cut a hole in the foundation and dumped the stuff into the ground. I'm sure Electrohome isn't 100% innocent but I don't think they created the problem the site is dealing with now.

Who was there after Electrohome? And were they dumping stuff from Electrohome?

Art Rite Advertising. They were dumping their paint chemicals and paint thinners.

Page 8. http://www.downloads.ene.gov.on.ca/files...vities.pdf

Pag2 2. https://www.kitchener.ca/en/resourcesGen...ndix-A.pdf

[Spokes]

I think the issue with expropriation is that the public entity doing so needs to use the property for a clearly defined public project. My understanding is that a city or other government can't just take over a property, get it cleaned up, and then make it a private property again.

My idea would be that the City would do something with the property itself, essentially acting as a developer.

Heh, I wonder what the neighbourhood reaction would be if the City said “we’re expropriating and cleaning up the property … so that we can build an affordable housing apartment building”.

I think the lack of action says the city doesn't want to act as a developer though.  Much the way they're doing nothing with all of their surface parking lots .