Kudos to city council for passing it and kudos to the Queen’s Park residents who pushed for, and got, a one-year moratorium on demolitions of heritage homes in Queen’s Park.
During that year the city will come up with a bylaw, or bylaws, to potentially protect the Queen’s Park neighbourhood as a permanent heritage conservation area.
One only has to look at Vancouver to see what a crazy real estate market has triggered.
Beautiful heritage homes are being bulldozed to be replaced by homes that make the 1980s “monster homes” look like cottages. The city of Vancouver has probably been the biggest loser in the quest to demolish heritage homes in favour of new homes with larger footprints and more square footage. But Port Moody and other cities known for their heritage homes have also suffered losses.
In Vancouver last year, the city issued 951 demolition permits for single-family homes. According to a Vancouver Sunarticle, 40 per cent were character homes that predated 1940.
When a city loses its heritage, it doesn’t just lose a different style of housing or an architectural design, it loses a piece of its very DNA.
As Caroline Adderson says, of heritage homes being demolished, “To me it’s like we are erasing all these stories. These are not just houses. They are cultural artifacts. The house stands for you and your family and all the people who lived in that house. I consider them repositories of merit and memory.”
New Westminster has about 60 single-family homes that are heritage designated. Those are split between Queen’s Park and the West End. So far, heritage homes in the city are still, generally speaking, worth more on the market than new monster homes. But that could always change in a volatile market.
New Westminster may not be able to predict the future, but it can work to protect the past. And that’s a good thing.
