The Ontario government doesn’t need to tear down a group of heritage industrial buildings in Toronto’s West Don Lands in order to decontaminate the site and allow housing to be built, a group of architects and community activists say.

The derelict red-brick buildings of the former Dominion Wheel and Foundries Co., the oldest of which dates back to 1917, have been at the centre of a political battle for weeks, after a local neighbourhood association won a court order blocking the province’s demolition, idling heavy equipment that had already started clearing the site.

The legal fight over the provincially owned site, since joined by the City of Toronto, is the latest clash between the Progressive Conservative government at Queen’s Park and the province’s largest city. The conflict took another turn this week, after the CBC cited court documents revealing that the province had for months been in confidential talks on a deal to sell the site.

Despite repeated questioning this week, neither Premier Doug Ford nor Municipal Affairs Minister Steve Clark would offer an explanation for why other developers had not been invited to submit competitive bids, as would be typical for a plot of land like this and was the procedure for other nearby projects. Both said no deal had been finalized.

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