If there’s a silver lining to the existential threat facing 401 Richmond, the vital cultural hub in the heart of Toronto, it’s that the issue has exposed a backwards provincial tax policy that imperils what it ought to protect. The province should learn the obvious lessons from this debacle and accept the new proposal from Toronto city council to save the arts haven and spaces like it, lest we all lose out.
Since 1994, 401 Richmond has provided below-market rents to artists and creative entrepreneurs who couldn’t otherwise afford to work downtown. By shielding non-profit art galleries and small cultural magazines, anti-poverty programs and other worthy organizations from the fluctuations of the market, the building’s owners have made a significant contribution to the revitalization of the core and the cultural life of the city.
Yet rather than rewarding Urbanspace, the company that owns the building, for its success, the province seems set on discouraging it. Late last year, the company learned that the heritage building’s property-tax bill would jump by 85 per cent in 2017. By 2020, it will have tripled. The owners can no longer absorb the rising costs – nor likely can many of its tenants. Without government intervention, the cultural hub appears doomed.
401 Richmond wouldn’t be the first distinguished casualty of the province’s perverse property-tax system. The trouble is that Ontario evaluates commercial buildings for tax purposes based only on so-called “highest and best use” – that is, not on their current use, but on the value of the sort of highrise condo that might be expected to take their place. The effect is that too often the interesting and idiosyncratic is uprooted in favour of the commercial and generic. Scores of creative enterprises have been thus driven from the core in recent years.
That’s a shame. Urban scholars make a compelling case that cultural richness not only improves quality of life, but also attracts the business, investment and creative talent a 21st-century city needs to flourish. It makes no sense, either socially or economically, that the tax code creates incentives for property owners to evict cultural institutions and turn heritage buildings into highrises.
That was the message Toronto city council sent to the province on Tuesday when it unanimously approved a motion urging Queen’s Park to change its tax policy. The city is right that we should be encouraging property owners to use their spaces “for dynamic purposes, including the arts, as opposed to just ‘highest and best use’.” The province should listen. It has every reason to want to preserve hubs like 401 Richmond, not destroy them.
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