Leamington council backs removal from heritage list

LEAMINGTON — At the October 26 meeting of Leamington Council, administration brought forth a recommendation for removal of a Seacliff Drive home from the Municipal Register of Heritage Properties.

The move would allow the owners of the property to demolish the building — something they were not allowed to do under the heritage registry rules.

Leamington’s Manager of Planning Services Danielle Truax, came to council with the request from the owners to remove the property from the heritage list and update the heritage list to reflect that removal.

Leamington’s Register of Heritage Properties was adopted by council in 2016 and contains four properties that are designated under Part IV of the Ontario Heritage Act (OHA) and 267 more properties that are deemed as having heritage potential.

Heritage designation is a protection mechanism with long-term implication for the alteration and demolition of a cultural heritage property. A designated property cannot be demolished or altered in such a way as to affect the heritage attributes of the property, without the approval from council.

It was initially thought that the property — located at 330 Seacliff Drive West — was built in a Georgian Revival style, but an evaluation recently performed by the Leamington Municipal Heritage Advisory Committee indicated that there was no physical, associative or contextual heritage value or significance associated with the property.

According to the report, the house had been uninhabitable for some time, due to extensive damage from the 2010 tornado.

After a brief discussion with Jackie Lassaline of Lassaline Planning Consultants, who is representing the property owners, council voted unanimously to approve the recommendation from administration and allow the removal of the property from the registry.