Lowertown congregation fears heritage designation

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The congregation at Église évangélique baptiste in Lowertown has been planning to move to a larger church building for the past 20 years.

About 350 to 400 people attend services, but the church at the corner of King Edward Avenue and Clarence Street can only fit about 250 people in the sanctuary.

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Growing pains are only one of its problems. A homelessness and drug crisis has been unfolding on the church’s doorstep. There have been incidents of vandalism, assault and fires set on the property.

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Church leaders say their hopes of selling the current church to help pay for another church in the Carlingwood area are evaporating —  and not just because the current church is located at the epicentre of Ottawa’s opioid crisis. The city’s built heritage committee voted on Monday to designate the church under the Ontario Heritage Act.

“We would be stuck with it,” said Gordon Belyea, a retired associate pastor at the church, who was at the meeting to argue against the designation.

“If a householder said, ‘We need to buy a house because our family is growing,’ the city couldn’t say, ‘You have to keep your old one,’ ” said the church’s pastor, Rev. Guy Pierre-Canel.

“The building is decaying rapidly. It may be considered heritage, but it’s a building at the end of its life,” said Belyea. “When the church was built, King Edward was tree-lined boulevard, not an urban trucking route. It’s basically shaking the building to pieces, and it makes it so noisy inside.”

In order to be designated heritage, a building must meet two out of nine criteria. The church, Ontario’s first francophone Baptist church, was built between 1904 and 1920 and designed by architect William James Abra, who designed numerous Ottawa churches and schools.

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The church meets seven out of the nine criteria, well exceeding the threshold for designation, said Lesley Collins, the city’s program manager for heritage planning. 

However, the Ontario Heritage Act only outlines criteria such as the style and workmanship of a building, its relationship to the history and context of the city — not whether its owner can afford to maintain a building no one will buy.

Development consultant Jane White Kirchmann told the hertiage committee it would be easy to see the site as offering student or affordable housing. But there is a humanitarian crisis unfolding in the area.

“Designation is a further burden that we just can’t support,” she said.

The city offers $25,000 for repairs to heritage buildings. But that’s a drop in the bucket compared to what needs to be done, said Pierre-Canel.

Belyea and Pierre-Canel believe some elements of the church can be incorporated into development of the site without keeping the box of the building in its entirety.

The church was listed in the heritage register in 2017. Belyea said he spoke out against its being listed at that time. In 2020, city council approved a zoning bylaw amendment to change the zoning from “minor institutional” to “traditional mainstreet,” allowing for a wider variety of future uses.

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“I think we’re very hopeful that a creative solution will come around for this property,” said Collins.

From a planning perspective, the city looks to be creative around proposals for heritage buildings. After a building is designated under the Heritage Act, there is a process through which an owner can apply to demolish or alter a heritage building, she said.

Churches are particularly challenging in terms of reuse. A condo development that reuses the former Saint-Charles church in Vanier is one example. The development of 180 Metcalfe St. incorporated the 1928 Art Deco style former Medical Arts Building with a new 27-storey tower.

City council is to consider the heritage designation early in April. Meanwhile, heritage planners are pressing ahead with a plan to bring forward about 25 individual heritage designations by the end of 2024— about five times Ottawa’s typical annual average.

Under Ontario’s Bill 23, the Build More Homes Faster Act, if a municipal council doesn’t issue a notice of intention to designate a property by the end of 2024, that property must be removed from that city’s heritage register and can’t be re-listed for five years.

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“There are lots of opportunities for flexibility here,” said Collins. “But given the timelines and the challenges that we have in the legislation, we have to proceed.”

The congregation will be moving to the former St. Martin’s Anglican Church near Carlingwood no matter what happens with the heritage designation. Not being able to find a buyer for the church on King Edward will just make that difficult and it may leave an eyesore in the neighbourhood, said Belyea.

“We’re going,” he said. “The Lord has opened the door. We’re walking through it. We trusted Him to provide for that. But it’s just putting an additional — I think unnecessary — burden on already strained resources.”

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