Debunking Brantford's "Hoover Myth"

You know, that myth that Hoover sat by and did nothing to prevent the great depression. Very wrong.

Well of course, we have our own municipal version of the Hoover Myth, and it goes something like this. Despite the (heroic at best and misguided at worst) efforts of successive city councils, the private sector allowed the south side to deteriorate, and government must come to the rescue.

Like me, you might not have seen this Expositor article, written a couple of years ago. Of course, true to the mainstream media and it's worship of power, it focuses on the "frustration" of good natured politicians trying to revive a sagging downtown, but unwittingly demonstrates a little more:

Contrary to popular impression, Steve Kun and others sought to transition from a commercial to a residential use of their properties:

In 1997, following a report entitled Downtown: A Time for Action, prepared by by the mayor's task force on downtown revitalization, zoning regulations for the downtown were changed in an interim control bylaw to allow commercial property owners to change their street level storefront space to residential.

The rationale was that the inability of the private sector to attract commercial investment had reached the point that any kind of development would be better to ensure some kind of use and occupation of the property rather than to leave it vacant and boarded up.

Of course, governments are usually the last to figure anything out, and for them it's either one designated "use" at a time:

In late 2004, though, as downtown revitalization gathered steam and property values began to rise, council and the Downtown BIA became concerned when landlords began to convert isolated individual storefronts to less desirable residential units not in keeping with its plan.

"The continuing trend of street-level residential uses has the potential to further negatively impact prospective development in the downtown core area," says the resulting staff report in June 2005.

So yet another zoning change to reinstate the ban on residential use at ground level was passed, but not on Kun, who had his previous permits grandfathered in (fortunately, since this would have driven up vacancy rates even more). This created a problem for the city:

The renovations were carried out gradually during 2006 and this year, so that most of the units were done and occupied by the time G.K. York's civic square private development and the public square reached completion. The two radically different forms of development are now fully apparent.

"The city is in no position to press its concern about all these ground-floor apartments, as long as they comply with property standards, the building code and other bylaws, " said Matt Reniers, the city's manager of policy planning and heritage.

Bylaws and property standards were not enforced? It sounds like the problem was they were being obeyed, so the city had to try another tack:

Again, quoted Mr. Reniers:

"They are considered a legal non-conforming use, so we don't have much control on that.

"About the only way the situation can be changed is if those buildings are demolished; they could be determined a discontinument of their present use, and any future development would have to adhere to the new bylaw."

And the rest is history. As I've said previously, the south side of Colborne was a stubborn holdout to the city governments "grand vision", so to punish it (and us), it must now be flattened.