{"id":23314,"date":"2019-03-21T18:20:43","date_gmt":"2019-03-21T22:20:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=23314"},"modified":"2019-03-21T18:20:52","modified_gmt":"2019-03-21T22:20:52","slug":"church-street-school-addition-clears-heritage-hurdle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/church-street-school-addition-clears-heritage-hurdle\/","title":{"rendered":"Church Street School addition clears Heritage hurdle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The proposed\nthree-storey addition to the historic Church Street School has received a\ncautious thumbs-up from Aurora\u2019s Heritage Advisory Committee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Committee made\ntheir comments ahead of this Thursday\u2019s Special Council Meeting at which local\nlawmakers will decide whether to make the addition, one of the centrepieces of\nthe Library Square redevelopment, official. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Heritage\nAdvisory Committee (HAC) met to review a report from municipal planner Adam\nRobb, who outlined where design plans stood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Mr. Robb\ntold HAC members that the team behind the proposed building addition, including\ndesign firms retained by the Town, have been in close consultation with the\nOntario Heritage Trust, which has provided preliminary support for the designs\nas proposed, as it is a \u201cmajor project\u201d there are still some details to hammer\nout with the Trust, including final design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the Committee\nmet, however, designs were top of mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe see this as a\nvery important centre in the Town and hope to do something respectful to add to\nthe Square,\u201d consultants told the group. \u201cOne of the very important principles\n<\/p>\n\n\n

[of the building]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

is we wanted the building not to exceed the footprint of the\nexisting schoolhouse. We have to be careful to ensure the new building is no\ntaller and we think that is important\u2026to defer to the existing building and its\nimportance in the community of Aurora.\u201d\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A glazed atrium, as\npreviously presented to Council, will be the link between the old and the new.\nIt will run the full length of the north side of the Church Street School, home\nto both the Aurora Cultural Centre and Aurora Museum & Archives, and\nprovide a \u201cbreak\u201d between the two buildings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe places where\nour building touches the existing building are really quite light,\u201d they said.\n\u201cWe have a parallel structure outside the wall of the schoolhouse so the north\nwall of the schoolhouse remains intact and in place \u2013 just a simple cog joint\nwhere the glass comes to meet the stonework at each of those ends.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The addition, if it\nis borne to fruition as proposed, will be sheathed in a \u201cveil\u201d \u2013 currently\nproposed to be made out of a copper material \u2013 which designers have said is\nintended to be \u201ccomplimentary\u201d to the existing heritage building, while masking\nsome of the infrastructure on the roof line that is necessary to accommodate\nthe second-storey performance hall space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Committee members\nwere nevertheless concerned with how the new addition will work in conjunction\nwith the heritage building and the neighbourhood that surrounds it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe existing\nbuilding is very historical, but I am wondering how the addition is sympathetic\nto that history at all,\u201d said HAC member Matthew\nKinsella, a builder with a special focus on heritage renovations. The designers\nsaid they are not trying to \u201cemulate\u201d the design of the Church Street School,\ninstead looking to build a sense of \u201cdistinction\u201d between the classic and the\nmodern, and creating a \u201cdialogue\u201d between the two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Kinsella instead\nsuggested alterations to the roof line, leaning more towards a mansard-style\nroof that is more angular than the proposed flat top, and lines that are\nconsistent with the existing building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These aesthetic\nconcerns were echoed by fellow HAC member Neil Asselin, who also questioned\nconsultants on the work that has been done so far to ensure the structural\nintegrity of the heritage building. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consultants said\nthey have engineers working to ensure the structural stability of the building,\nas well as lingering concerns about the high water table in the area. They deal\nwith these issues frequently, they said, and the team is well-versed in\naddressing them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe did lose a\nsignificant building on Wellington Street when they were putting an addition\non,\u201d said Mr. Asselin, referring to the former Sormeh Spa building that once\nstood on Wellington Street East, across from Victoria Street, and has now been\nrebuilt as an apartment building. \u201cWhen they excavated, it compromised the structure,\nit was devastating and it had to be demolished. So, I am always terrified when\nwe\u2019re doing things like this. Knowing what we\u2019re dealing with, and I know it\nsays [the Church Street School] will be shored up, but are we prepared for\nnuclear disaster?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Church Street\nSchool, he added, was \u201cthe jewel in Aurora\u2019s crown\u201d that was an \u201ciconic\nlandmark\u201d unique within this community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe really want to make sure we\u2019re not putting\nit in some sort of cultural jeopardy,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The proposed three-storey addition to the historic Church Street School has received a cautious thumbs-up from Aurora\u2019s Heritage Advisory Committee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-642","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-05 11:45:00","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23314\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}