Oakville News N.M.
Interested in an elegant four-bedroom house in Old Oakville?
The two-and-a-half storey Tudor style home at 329 Douglas Ave is looking for a new owner, and $4.5 million could make it yours.
It features hardwood floors, wooden ceiling beams and trim, fireplaces, a sunroom, a detached garage and an inground pool.
And soon, the home will likely add a heritage designation to that list of features.
Officially known as the Guess House, the property dates to about 1910. As one of the earliest homes in Old Oakville’s Brantwood neighbourhood, it showcases the architecture of the time in its brick and timber cladding, windows, façade, recessed entry and multi-sloped roofs.
According to town heritage staff, the house is “a unique and elaborate example of popular building styles in Ontario in the 1910s.”
It is also among 80 properties that the town is looking to protect through designation under the Ontario Heritage Act over the coming 17 months.
The slew of designations is the result of changes to heritage protection introduced by the provincial government last year, as part of its Bill 23 legislation.
For many years, the town has maintained a heritage registry that includes all of Oakville’s officially designated historic properties and districts, but also lists properties of interest that might meet the criteria for designation.
These listed but not designated properties are marked for further evaluation if anyone expresses interest in demolishing them.
It’s a form of protection provided to nearly 300 historic Oakville properties, as of last May.
But under the new rules, listed properties may only stay on the heritage registry for two years. At that point, they must be either designated or removed for at least five years.
For properties listed prior to the new legislation, the deadline is Jan. 1, 2025.
That has the town scrambling to evaluate and protect some key historic homes like the Guess House.
About 100 of the 294 properties listed on Oakville’s registry have “strong potential to meet the criteria for designation,” according to a report from heritage planning staff.
The town has hired two new heritage planners to work through that list, with the aim of prioritizing designation of the 80 properties most likely to be attractive for redevelopment.
William Schiavone, the Royal LePage broker listing the Guess House, says the sellers recognize the heritage features of the property and won’t be opposing the town’s efforts to designate the house.
Although official heritage designation can influence marketability, he says century old homes are generally only attractive to a small portion of homebuyers under any circumstances.
“Owning a historic home is not for everyone,” he said.
But Schiavone says the changes to the heritage rules will provide much-needed clarity to owners of properties listed on the heritage registry – or what he calls “the watch list.”
“I think it’s fantastic that this is happening,” he said.
Schiavone says the old rules allowed the town to simply place properties on the registry without doing the real work of deciding if they were truly worthy of heritage designation. That left owners uncertain about the redevelopment or rebuilding potential of their homes when it came time to sell.
He says the options were to either hire an expensive consultant to assess the property or apply for a demolition permit to see how the town would react.
“I’ve had clients who have had to apply for a demolition permit on their own home – not because they wanted to demolish it, but so they could see what would happen.”
The heritage rules changes are part of new Ontario housing policies introduced to meet the province’s goal of building 1.5 million new homes over the next decade.
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