Property owners learn quickly that the municipality is usually their worst enemy. City councils are often filled up with people who are quick to burden your property with obligations that are inappropriate and unfair.
One inappropriate tool that city council uses against property owners is the heritage designation. In one recent Ontario case, the town of Oakville decided to stop a golf course from selling to a developer by designating the golf course as a ‘heritage’ property. As many property owners know this heritage designation is cancer to your property value. Ottawa city council is presently engaged in precisely this same heritage designation game.
Many Ottawa home owners recently received letter from the City of Ottawa indicating that the City of Ottawa is about to deem their property with a heritage designation because your house has some nice feature that you now realize could make your house unsaleable because of this designation.
City councils know perfectly well that their weaponizing of the heritage designation has the effect of making property unsaleable. This is precisely why Oakvillle rushed through its bylaw in the case of local golf course. Oakville determined that it would force this property to continue as a golf course. It didn’t matter to the city whether the golf course was uneconomic, or whether there was a higher and better residential or commercial use for scarce land. The city council imposed the heritage designation to get its way.
Thankfully the Ontario Superior Court thought otherwise, determining that the heritage designation was improper and the city acted in bad faith. It was ironic that Oakville knew that the golf course was uneconomic insisting upon taxing the golf course as if it were a housing development. The judge thought this point was particularly damning of the municipality.
Property owners in Ottawa and elsewhere properly and justifiably hate this heritage designation. The city taxes these property owners at the highest rates of market sale-ability and with the other hand makes the properties unsaleable with a heritage designation.
The case is Clublink Corporation ULC v. Oakville (Town) (2018), 143 OR(3d) 738
