[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto building rises from the ashes of an unsolved fire"

[rfmcdonald]

At The Globe and Mail, Wallace Immen reports about an unusual effort to restore something of a destroyed historic building on Queen Street West.

There’s an apparition of things past on the upper floors of a new three-storey building on Toronto’s historic Queen Street West.

Etched on the stainless steel panels that screen the building’s glass facade are traces of the eyebrowed windows and crenulated brick trim of a Victorian-era building that previously stood on this site. It was destroyed by a still-unexplained inferno in 2008 that turned half a city block of stores into charred piles of rubble.

Bringing a building back from the ashes at 619 Queen St. W. has been a four-year saga for Hullmark Developments Ltd. The actual building was the simplest part, says Jeff Hull, the urban real estate investment company’s president.

The site sat vacant behind a hoarding for four years before Hullmark bought it in 2012. A decision was made to build to three storeys, the same size as the former building, because it would speed the permit process by not requiring a zoning variance, Mr. Hull says.

However, complicating the project, that stretch of Queen Street West east of Bathurst is designated as part of a commercial heritage conservation district (HCD) because many of its buildings date back to the 19th century.