One hundred years ago, the City of Brantford advertised itself as the most important manufacturing centre in Canada. During the century that followed, its industrial economy boomed, faltered, and finally collapsed. By the end of the twentieth century, Brantford was known for unemployment, hard luck, and the infamy of having “the worst downtown in Canada. On June 7, 2008, the City of Brantford held a funeral to celebrate the death of its downtown core. The event was held in order to signify a death, but also a rebirth of the city. This rebirth was due in part with the new Wilfred Laurier University campus that set up shop in Brantford.

Leo Groarke, author of Reinventing Brantford, has been a huge supporter of the university, and the growth and redevelopment of the City of Brantford. He’s currently embroiled in a battle with members of the city council who want to tear down 41 historic buildings on South Colborne Street. This strip features a remarkable collection of nineteenth and early twentieth century architecture which includes buildings built and owned by significant architects, former mayors and important historical figures. The situation regarding these buildings directly relates back to the author’s premise in his book – anyone interested in the plight of the North American city core will appreciate Reinventing Brantford, and Groarke’s plight to salvage Brantford’s history.

Leo wrote a Letter to the Editor in the Brantford Expositor with his argument for renovation rather than demolition included below. A recent review in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record for Reinventing Brantford put it best,

One might be tempted to dismiss this volume as local history with little relevance beyond Brantford. Fortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. Implicit in this story of urban renewal are lessons that can be applied in any community as the post-modern shift from suburbanization and sprawl to infill and an information age continues.

A letter from Leo Groarke, outgoing Principal of Laurier Brantford

It is not that downtown revitalization is complete. A long line of buildings on Colborne Street stand as evidence that there is more to do. The fate of the buildings has become the question of the day. I agree with the Expositor, which has suggested that their expropriation and demolition may be the defining issue in the upcoming municipal election.

Many of the members of City Council seem determined to make it so. They are pushing ahead with demolition in a way that will not tolerate any stay of execution on some forty buildings. No less a figure than Josh Bean, the former chair of the downtown BIA, has publicly expressed his frustration at their refusal to countenance a full investigation of the pros and cons of demolition.

I have experienced the attitude that Bean has criticized. When, a few weeks ago, I asked one of the key supporters of demolition how things were going, they raised their voice and eyebrows and, in an exasperated tone, told me that there were those for, and those against, the fixing of downtown.

This response was disappointing. It seems part of a recent trend which sees politicians running from, instead of engaging in, political debate. It should not need to be said that those who oppose the demolition of South Colborne include many of the people most committed to downtown. Instead of dismissing them as people who don’t care, politicians should engage the issues that they raise.

Driving down Colborne – the only exposure some Brantfordians have to downtown Brantford – invites visceral reactions to boarded buildings. But visceral reactions are no substitute for thinking through the downtown’s problems and it is simple minded to think that demolishing buildings will resolve them.

Fundamentally, the downtown is not in need of tearing down, but of building up. What it needs is sustainable enterprises that give it a raison d’etre and a long term, viable economy. So far, the ten million dollars (more if you count all the time and energy devoted to the project) budgeted for the expropriation and demolition of Colborne has done nothing to accomplish this. By evicting tenants, it has weakened the street’s already weak economy.

What should have been done with this ten million dollars? In many cities across North America, it is difficult to know what should be done downtown. Not so in Brantford, where it is obvious that the city can continue a remarkable turn around by bringing Mohawk College to the downtown core.

Doing so would reorganize the city, moving Mohawk from an industrial area ill suited for a campus, creating a post-secondary concentration downtown. This concentration would build a sustainable economic basis for the future of Brantford and downtown, fostering positive synergies between Laurier, Mohawk, Nipissing, and the city.

Immediately, this would bring another two hundred jobs and another two thousand students downtown. In less than a year, for much less than ten million dollars, a Mohawk deal would double the impact that Laurier has already had downtown. Why then have politicians focused our finances and their energy on Colborne rather than a Mohawk deal?

But Mohawk is only one of many possibilities. There are many ways that one could have spent ten million dollars – by lowering taxes or on the proposed downtown Y, new residences for Laurier, a new bus terminal, the Brantford Arts Block, another parking structure, programs to attract new businesses downtown, a much needed new facility for the Brant Museum, and so on and so forth.

Those in favour of demolition claim that the money spent on it prepares the way for the redevelopment of Colborne. This is, at best, idle speculation. At worst it is the kind of wishful thinking that has characterized Brantford’s mistakes in the past – notably, the Icomm Telecommunications Centre, the Eaton’s building and Massey Hall, all of which were envisioned and sold as projects that would turn the downtown around.

So far, the only Colborne project that is more than pure speculation is a joint Laurier / Mohawk / Nipissing / YMCA facility which has no government funding, and fading prospects in light of large federal and provincial deficits. Even if government funding was available, Colborne is a poor site for the facility. The difficulties with the grade on the site will add an extra $4 million dollars to construction costs -- $4 million that could better be spent elsewhere.

In the absence of real projects for south Colborne, why take the existing buildings down? Not so long ago, Laurier tried to demolish a historic house on Victoria Square – the Goold House. The building was in much worse shape than those on Colborne. City Council, which included a number of the city’s current councilors, refused demolition. They argued that historic buildings should not be demolished until there was a commitment to replace them.

This was a wise decision. We should not throw heritage away without something valuable to replace it. And one cannot judge the heritage value of the Colborne buildings by taking a look at their boarded up exteriors (that is like judging the value of an oil field by looking at the prairie that sits on top of it).

Some Colborne Street buildings may not be salvageable but the negative comments made about them are characterized by a great deal of exaggerated rhetoric. Pardon me for scepticism, but I have heard it all before. The defects in the buildings that Laurier so successfully renovated were deemed impossible to rectify. In many cases, they were vacant longer than the buildings on Colborne and in a shocking state of disrepair (if one doubts this, one should look at the before and after photos of the Wilkes House renovations).

In the aftermath, the 1904 Carnegie library, Brantford’s 1880 post office, the 1948 Odeon theatre, the 1880 Wilkes House and soon the late nineteenth century CIBC buildings are flagship buildings for the campus. Every week for most of the last ten years, I have given tours to important visitors. I have not had one who was not amazed at the quality of the buildings and the character of a campus which is becoming one of a handful of Canadian campuses renowned for their architecture.

South Colborne has the same potential. It is a remarkable collection of nineteenth and early twentieth century architecture which includes buildings built and owned by significant architects, former mayors and important historical figures, companies and organizations in Brantford history (among them, James Moore, Arunah Huntington, the Knights of Labour Co-op Association, Brantford’s 1890s Bell Telephone Office, the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, Ogilvie’s, the Alen theatre chain).

With wise choices, Brantford could join a select group of cities – Charleston, South Carolina (“where history lives”), Quebec City (“the cradle of French civilization in North America”), St. Augustine, Florida (“the Ancient City”) – which have made historic downtowns the basis of a booming economy that attracts visitors and residents.

Hard to imagine? Ten years ago, it was impossible to imagine what we have already accomplished in the post secondary area. And Brantford has real assets in the realm of history and historic buildings. Historically sensitive projects by the city, law firms, landlords, the universities, G.K. York, Y Homes, JG Group, MMMC, Vicano Construction, Cianfrone Architects and Millard, Rouse and Rosebrugh have built the local expertise that this requires.

So far, the only approach to the redevelopment of the downtown which has worked has wedded itself to Brantford’s history. Why throw this away on Colborne with nothing to replace it? Why take down all the properties before a proper, detailed, assessment of the history and the quality of the buildings? Why have councilors changed their minds on the wisdom of demolition without a commitment to build up?

The answer seems to be a disappointing one: political expediency. Some politicians think that an appeal to knee jerk reactions to Colborne Street is the way to win an election. Far be it for me to predict the outcome of anything as uncertain as an election in Brantford, but I cannot help but find it ironic that members of a city council which has much to boast about would hang their hats on the an issue in which they have shown little leadership, less imagination, and a dispiriting determination to have political ends trump the long term interests of the city.