HomeMy WebLinkAbout382"Article copied from the Bay News, October 2,1996, page 8.
Claremont builders Karsten Smith and Don Bennet were granted their wish Monday night by
Pickering Council, paving the way for the re-birth of the historic Campbell/MacPherson House.
Smith and Bennet, required to painstakenly rebuild the 150 year-old home
(uprooted from its former Lynn Heights Park home in June), asked for two irregular requirements
from council before starting construction, including a building permit for the house before
submitting a subdivision plan. They also wanted an extension of the one-foot road to a parcel of
land they will acquire to the south of the Campbell/MacPherson lot.
The requests fly in the face of normal zoning requirements, and to complicate the issue further,
Smith and Bennet (through Victorian Homes) do not own the lands. They have, however,
an option to buy the lands from trustees Schwartz Levitsky Feldman.
Smith said the approvals are needed to allow the historic house to be built this year.
Extending the road allowance, he explained last week, will allow him to drum up the financing for
the project.
The builders did grant one concession to the town: they agreed to grant title to a watercourse
(and ten metres on each side) in the north end of the land parcel to Pickering.
"