York Region municipalities are bracing for a deadline to get heritage properties listed and are joining calls of concern about a Jan. 2025 deadline.
The Architectural Conservancy of Ontario (ACO) is calling on the province to extend the deadline to allow municipalities more time to designate properties on their heritage registers. Any property not yet in the process of being designated by the deadline will be removed from the register, meaning they could be open for development, free of restriction.
Newmarket’s heritage committee and Richmond Hill council are also calling for a deadline extension.
“With the expiry date now months away, municipalities have been scrambling to review their registers and prioritize properties for designation or other protection,” ACO chair Diane Chin said in a news release. “But this is nearly impossible on such a tight timeline.”
The province imposed the new deadline as part of changes to the Ontario Heritage Act in 2022. It asks municipalities to get through their heritage registers, which require property owners to give 60-days notice before demolishing a property.
The ACO has written to the province requesting that the deadline be extended until 2030.
“This would give municipalities time to better plan, resource and implement a complex undertaking,” Chin said.
Municipalities, including Newmarket, have started work toward the deadline.
Newmarket staff told the heritage committee last month that they should be able to designate 53 priority properties by the end of the year, in time for the deadline. Those designations stand to grant property recognition, as well as protection from demolition or unsympathetic alterations.
The heritage committee has requested that council back the ACO’s proposal and request the province extend the deadline, though Newmarket council has yet to take up the motion. Regardless, staff indicated they are confident they can make the deadline.
“We have put together a detailed project plan,” planner Adrian Cammaert told the committee last month. “We know exactly where we’re going, and we feel like we’re going to get there.”
Richmond Hill’s committee of the whole voted April 3 to ask the province to extend the deadline, noting it does not expect it can complete the work sorting through heritage register properties by the end of the year.
Chin said property owners should have more choice when it comes to heritage properties and be able to have the register there as an option.
“ACO believes property owners should not be forced to choose between designation and nothing at all to recognize the heritage significance of their property,” Chin said. “But, if this is what the government wants, they could easily provide a few more years to help municipalities work with their communities to get it right.”
