Victoria city councillors have granted heritage status to the 1971 exterior of the former Times Colonist Building and awarded its new owners a 10-year tax exemption to assist with seismic upgrades.
Merchant House Capital, which purchased the building at 2621 Douglas St. in 2017, applied for the tax exemption under a city program designed to help owners protect heritage structures in the event of an earthquake.
The owners plan a $26.6-million redevelopment of the site, renamed the Victoria Press Building, to create a mixed-use office space with a distillery, roof-top common area and restored facades and gardens along Douglas Street and Kings Road.
The Times Colonist will remain a tenant.
City staff recommended approval of both the heritage status and the tax exemption based on the building's Late Modern architecture and its ties to the Times Colonist, which began printing in 1858 as the British Colonist and merged with the Victoria Daily Times in 1980.
“It’s associated with over 162 years of print journalism in Victoria, and its form, scale and massing symmetry, the exposed aggregate panels which decorate the façade, the windows and the full height entry are all considered significant,” John O’Reilly, the city’s senior heritage planner, told councillors Thursday.
The tax exemption applies only to the original building; it excludes the former press room and the parking lot to the rear.
Based on current property values, a 10-year tax exemption would be worth $1.9 million, city figures show. Once property values rise following the renovation, a 10-year tax exemption would be worth about $4.5 million.
Either way, the exemption will be worth less than the total cost of seismic upgrades which are projected at $5.3 million for the heritage-designated part of the building, O’Reilly said.
He noted that an outside consultant, hired by the city to review the building owner's construction budget, “concluded the project would not be financially viable without the tax exemption.”
The project sits at the centre of a planned urban village called Humber Green that is bounded by Douglas Street, Hillside Avenue, Blanshard Street and Bay Street. At present, the neighbourhood has large expanses of surface parking and isn’t pedestrian-friendly. “The vision for Humber Green is its total transformation into a mixed-use and employment area that would become a northern edge for downtown and a new hub,” O’Reilly said.
“This project will help accelerate the envisioned changes.”
Councillors unanimously supported the heritage designation and tax exemption at a committee of the whole meeting Thursday. They were expected to ratify the decision in the evening.
Coun. Marianne Alto said she never would have thought of the building as worthy of a heritage designation until she read staff’s analysis.
“So I appreciate the fact that the program allows there to be an understanding and recognition of the value of modern as well as older buildings,” she said.
Alto was less inclined, she said, to support retention of the newspaper’s colonial-era name on the front of the building.
“But I leave that to the new owners,” she said. “I think it’s fraught with issues.”
Coun. Ben Isitt made a similar point, noting that the Times Colonist’s name is “obviously challenging terminology in the context of decolonization.”
Mayor Lisa Helps expressed hope that the owners will one day develop the parking lot behind the building as well.
“I don’t think we’ll see this land sitting fallow for too long, particularly considering the lack of Class A office space,” she said.
“I think this is a real opportunity to create that — not only in the refurbished building, but hopefully with something in the parking lot behind.”
