Dave LeBlanc – Globe and Mail

Pic­ture this: It’s a sunny Sun­day in 1990, and a thirty-something cou­ple stroll the board­walk dis­cussing din­ner options on Queen St. E. Dad is pulling a bick­er­ing brother and sis­ter along in a wagon as the gulls swoop and call over­head. In the dis­tance, a sweet solu­tion to the bick­er­ing – an ice cream stand – beckons.

For Shel­ley Fen­ton, this per­sonal mem­ory is made all the more sweet because, twenty years later, he’s back in the Beaches with his son, Shane Fen­ton, now 27. Except today, this pres­i­dent and vice-president of Reserve Prop­er­ties are sur­vey­ing their lat­est project, the con­ver­sion of the for­mer Belle­fair United Church into a con­do­minium, retail and town­house complex.

The 1922 Beaches land­mark at 2000 Queen St. E. has been vacant since two con­gre­ga­tions joined together and the sur­plus build­ing was put up for sale about a year ago.

Out of 11 bid­ders, Reserve was cho­sen by the newly formed Beach United Church, says Shane Fen­ton, because “we really made an effort in get­ting to know them and show­ing them that our endgame and end design would do some­thing that incor­po­rated sig­nif­i­cant com­po­nents of the church.”

And a fair bit will remain, includ­ing the south façade, the stout south­east cor­ner steeple and the east façade. Along Queen, where the build­ing now presents a blank face to the street (the entrance to the church has always been on Belle­fair), large open­ings will be cut for com­mer­cial ten­ants. Retail activ­ity, of course, will bring life to what is “essen­tially a gap in the fab­ric of the neigh­bour­hood,” says Roland Rom Colthoff of RAW design, lead archi­tect on the project.

RAW will also add two new storeys, and a land­scaped “pri­vate street” will sep­a­rate the 23 condo units in the church por­tion of the build­ing from the six three-storey town­houses to be con­structed where Ker­ley Hall now stands. Through­out, what’s new will be dis­tinct from what’s orig­i­nal via a black-brown brick from Bramp­ton; this brick will also be used where inter­ven­tions to the old red brick must be made, such as around the new ground-level entrance on Belle­fair: “It’ll look odd if you try and repli­cate what’s there now,” says RAW’s Erica Govan.

While the con­ver­sion of eccle­si­as­ti­cal archi­tec­ture to com­mon, earthly use is always a tricky propo­si­tion (and might offend a por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion), it bears keep­ing in mind that Reserve Prop­er­ties was under no oblig­a­tion to pre­serve any part of the build­ing, since it didn’t have her­itage des­ig­na­tion. Also, the father-and-son team could have opted for a much big­ger build­ing behind the church façade by elim­i­nat­ing the land­scaped court­yard and build­ing seven or eight storeys in a stepped con­fig­u­ra­tion to min­i­mize shadow-casting on neigh­bour­ing homes.

By ask­ing her­itage archi­tect Christo­pher Bor­gal to con­sult, and by hir­ing a sen­si­tive bou­tique archi­tec­ture firm, the Fen­tons have found a way to respect both per­sonal mem­o­ries and the col­lec­tive one all Beaches vis­i­tors share. “Com­mer­cially, we’re not going to make as much money as we would if we built an extra 30,000 square feet,” says the elder Mr. Fen­ton. “But at this stage in my life – I’ve been doing this for 29 years – we said, ‘Let’s make a statement.’ “

And it cer­tainly is a hand­some state­ment that will attract much atten­tion, but save for a few Gothic win­dows and unusual floor plans in some units, there won’t be much that’s church-like about inte­ri­ors because, unfor­tu­nately, the con­gre­ga­tion took every­thing (even stuff that was nailed down) for use in the other church or as cher­ished memen­tos. As for the few bits that remain, such as stair­cases, wain­scot­ing or wood trim, these will be retained if inte­rior design firm II BY IV Design Asso­ciates can find uses for them.

But no mat­ter, a tour of the on-site pre­sen­ta­tion cen­tre shows a rich­ness of fin­ish selec­tions com­bined with Scav­olini cab­i­nets and Euro­pean appli­ances that will appeal to a wide range of buy­ers. Inter­est­ingly, the two model kitchens on view each reflect the per­sonal taste of father and son: the more tra­di­tional kitchen is Shelley’s choice, while the hip­per, mod­ern kitchen is Shane’s. “That was kind of fun to do,” says the older Mr. Fenton.

“Do you guys have a wager as to which one will be more pop­u­lar?” asks Ms. Govan with a laugh.

Since this is the Beaches, ameni­ties will include a fit­ness cen­tre and a dog­gie spa to hose off Rover after chas­ing seag­ulls in the wet sand. Prices start in the mid-300,000s and go to over a million.

Dutch archi­tect Her­man Hertzberger wrote that the more a per­son is involved with the “form and con­tent” of his or her sur­round­ings, the more those sur­round­ings become “appro­pri­ated” and inter­nal­ized by that per­son. Just as one’s spir­i­tual home invests a per­son in their com­mu­nity, one’s phys­i­cal home, too, is a place that can nur­ture the soul. Thanks to the Fen­tons, this build­ing will have done both.

“Ninety-nine per­cent of archi­tects would have taken this thing and razed it,” fin­ishes the elder Mr. Fen­ton. “And you know what, when Shane does pull me along in the wagon, I can look up and say, ‘Hey, we did that.’ “

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Con­tact the Jef­frey Team for more infor­ma­tion – 416−388−1960

Lau­rin & Natalie Jef­frey are Toronto Real­tors with Cen­tury 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these arti­cles, they repro­duce them here for peo­ple who
are inter­ested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
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