|
By Peter Kuitenbrouwer
It was business as usual yesterday in the brightly lit cafeteria of Bridgepoint Health, the facility formerly known as Riverdale Hospital, which sits behind the Don Jail on the corner of Gerrard Street East and Broadview Avenue.
The hospital, built in 1963, is a curved building -- "half-round" is how architects describe it. In the cafeteria, a curving bank of floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows offers a restful view of the sprawling riverbank running down to the Don River. Patients and staff lingered there yesterday in comfortable chairs, sipping coffee, chatting, reading the newspaper.
All this is about to change. On Tuesday, despite a major challenge from the city's architectural and heritage movement, city council voted unanimously to approve a plan by Bridgepoint Health to knock the building down.
Bridgepoint Health has an ambitious plan to completely reshape this corner, today the site of a jail, a library, a lawn bowling club and the hospital. Bridgepoint wants to demolish all but the library and the old part of the jail and replace them with "a 12-storey hospital integrated with the old Don Jail, four mixed-use buildings, a new public park and a realigned Don Jail Roadway, for a total density of 3.38 times on this site."
Hospitals have sat on this site since the late 19th century, and the community is united that a hospital should continue here. Bridgepoint Health has told the city that in order to achieve its dream of a state-of-the-art facility for complex long-term care, it must receive a demolition permit for the half-round building.
That's where the hospital parts company with many of its neighbours, heritage architects and other planners who believe Bridgepoint could build a new hospital on the site and still save the nine-storey hospital building, which they call an important example of modern architecture.
"The fight is not over," Julie Culp, a local jazz singer who walks in Riverdale Park every morning with a group of women who call themselves the Riverdale Walkers.
"Bridgepoint is part of the vista, part of the landscape. It nestles beautifully into the park. It has an aesthetic value and a creative value, and there's a sense of peace about it. We just can't imagine having anything else there."
She agrees with Alex Spiegel of Context Development, one of a group retained by the city to examine the site. In a recent letter to the city, he suggested that, rather than knock the half-round building down, at a cost of $1-million to $1.5-million, the hospital could sell it for re-use as market housing, for $8-million to $12-million in revenue.
"The half-round building should remain," he wrote. "I believe that all members of the peer review would also concur."
The Toronto Preservation Board, which has the power to study buildings for possible protection from demolition, has repeatedly refused to consider the merits of the hospital building. Yesterday, Catherine Nasmith, vice-chair of the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario, said her group is seeking legal advice on a possible challenge of council's decision to the Ontario Municipal Board.
Riverdale ripe for condo conversion: Globe and Mail, June 17th, 2005.
Critique of the meeting: Globe and Mail, July 9th, 2005.
Argument for demolition of Riverdale: bad plumbing?: National Post, Nov 11th, 2005.
Demolition of significant modern buildings picks up momentum: Globe and Mail, Nov. 26th, 2005.
History vs Healthcare? Or not...?: Eye, Dec. 8th, 2005.
Debate swirls around hospital's fate at Council meeting.: National Post, Jan. 18th, 2006
Riverdale Hospital for wrecking?: Star, Jan. 25th, 2006
Keep historic half-round around as it is: Star, Jan. 26th, 2006.
Development arguments wanting for logic: Now, Feb. 9, 2006.
Demolition is environmentally unconscienable: National Post, Feb. 17th, 2006.
Locals want to know: Why give land away?: National Post, March 11th, 2006.
Citizens catch Bridgepoint hi-jinx: Now, March 16th, 2006.
Progressives on Council fumble the Bridgepoint
scheme: Now, March 23rd,
2006.
Save Riverdale
Toronto Architectural Conservancy
|