Alterations to Heritage Property at 2490-2506 Yonge St, Intention to Designate 2490-2506 Yonge Street under Part IV, Section 29 of the Ontario Heritage Act, and Authority to Enter into a Heritage Easement Agreement at 2490-2506 Yonge Street

NOV 2019

I write on behalf of EPRA — Eglinton Park Residents’ Association, on the matter of the old Capitol Theatre at 2490-2506 Yonge Street.

Our Residents’ Association has a catchment area in the northwest quadrant of the intersection of Yonge and Eglinton. We are lodged in the nine city blocks east of Eglinton Park, with Roselawn our northern boundary. Another organization, LPRO – Lytton Park Residents’ Organization – sits on the tract in which the building in question lies. In many matters, this one among them, EPRA and LPRO consult very closely and support one another. So, although the theatre, after a fashion, “belongs” with LPRO, it is, and long has been, of intense interest to our group, just as, in the recent past, the fate of our “Postal Station K” interested LPRO.

The theatre has always been part of our larger neighbourhood. It has stood there more than a century. It is a fine piece of early twentieth-century streetscape (finished ca. 1914), a work of in part of Murray Brown (renovations of 1923-1924), the same Toronto architect who designed Station K, and we are keen to keep both buildings as part of his legacy to the city.

The movie house has excellent street frontage, with small shops of the sort that enlivened our streets in the streetcar epoch. Keeping it will help preserve the character of that stretch of Yonge.

Over the past five or so years, EPRA, like other groups, has been in repeated consultation with the developer, Madison, about their evolving plans for the site. At the outset, Madison intended to take the theatre down, and merely to recycle bits of the facade elsewhere in a large, complex project. By this fall, however, the plan had evolved, with a less massive mixed-use building, lower, and more accommodating to the facade and the interior of the theatre. We in EPRA welcome that change. We prefer to see old structures put to new uses, in creative ways that respect the past in an inventive fashion. We do not insist on preserving the old building in its entirety, but we look for a re-use that makes it visible and distinct. Mere facadism is not a good solution, so we hope for good design that brings out both the old and the new.

Tom Cohen

Chair, EPRA