Land to stand vacant until Finch LRT is built

[attach]1265[/attach]A plot of land that up until last year housed a small retail plaza on Finch Avenue will remain empty until plans are finalized for the light rail along the thoroughfare.

“The plaza was mostly vacant,” said David Holmes of Anndale Properties, owner of the property at Grantbrook Avenue and Finch. “Our key businesses left mostly because of the age of the building and the location.”

North York city planner Paul Byrne said it is the city’s vision to build a six-story multipurpose building where the Grantbrook plaza previously stood.

But Holmes said they will not put forth any applications until the TTC’s plan for a rail line along Finch is cemented.

“The light rapid transit will bring better traffic to the area,” he said. “The street patterns and configuration of Finch will be changing and that has huge implications for all the properties.”

That includes a house next to the land, also owned by Anndale Properties.

Because of talks of development in the Finch West area, Ron Waine and his four siblings had their parents’ homes as historical properties.

“It was very important to our family to have that accomplished before we sold the houses,” he said.

Their parents owned a house on Hendon Avenue, next to the plaza, where Waine and his siblings lived most of their lives. They also owned a house on Finch, which their grandfather, Arthur Waine, built in the 1920s. It is the oldest residential home on the street.

Both properties have housed five generations of Waine family members.

After designating the house, the Waine family sold the properties in the fall of 2008 to Anndale Properties. By law the Finch home can’t be demolished but can be relocated.

Edith Geduld of the North York Historical Society said the Arthur Waine house is a reminder of the evolution of Finch Avenue West from an access road for mills and farms to a major corridor for the residential development of North York.

“There is very little else in the area to remind us of the streetscape of that time and I would hope that any future development of area will incorporate this heritage property,” she said.