One of the last grand old buildings in Metrotown could be part of the modern Silver development.
"It's a critical piece, a touchstone to the past," Burnaby heritage planner Jim Wolf said, in reference to the Mowat residence. "It made a lot of sense."
The Daniel and Amelia Mowat residence on Beresford Street in the Maywood neighbourhood of Metrotown, is right in the middle of Intracorp Silver Avenue Project Ltd.'s planned development site.
The home was built in 1913 for Daniel Mowat and his wife, Amelia Mary, according to a report from Basil Luksun, the city's director of planning and building. The Mowats lived there until 1923.
Many of the older homes in the Maywood neighbourhood were replaced in the '50s and '60s, according to Wolf, and the Craftsman-style farmhouse is one of the last to survive.
"The whole Maywood area saw the historic homes of that area completely destroyed, so this is really one of the last major and significant heritage buildings left in that area," he said.
The opportunity to preserve the Mowat residence came about because the city owned the property and the developer wanted to purchase city-owned land in the area for its Silver highrise development, according to Wolf.
"So it was a matter of negotiation to see if we could retain the building on the site as part of the proposal," he said. "In terms of going forward, one of the main concerns about preserving the house in this location was looking at the urban fabric of Metrotown."
The site of the 38-storey Silver highrise apartment development is at Beresford Street and Silver Avenue. The Mowat residence will be moved to face McKay Avenue, to be part of the pedestrian plaza area along the Beresford Art Walk, according to Wolf, with open space, trees and landscaping around it.
"This development will be a key piece of that art walk," he said. "Preserving a heritage building within sight of the art walk, as part of the plaza, we felt really helped connect the development to the history of the old Central Park district."
Donald Luxton and Associates Inc., a cultural and heritage resource firm in Vancouver, assessed the building, Wolf said, with the firm looking for key original features to preserve.
The interior of the Mowat residence will be renovated for four commercial rental suites, according to the report.
Working with developers to combine heritage buildings on modern urban properties is not new for the city, Wolf pointed out.
"We started doing heritage revitalization agreements and incorporating houses into modern urban developments going back to 1980, back when the Andrew (and Margaret) Johnson House was saved up on Kingsway," he said.
Because there are few opportunities to save such properties in the city centres, the city tries to work with developers as often as possible, to do so, he added.
"When projects come forward, we advance the proposal to the developer and land owner to consider opportunities under our incentive program to do this," Wolf explained. "So that's certainly something we introduce at the very beginning stage of redevelopment of a project, and we look at the opportunities it presents - whether it's suitable in the landscape, whether it's feasible in terms of the area that's going to have to be retained in order to preserve a building, and then we take it through the heritage commission and council."
The city is presenting heritage revitalization agreement and heritage designation bylaws for the Mowat residence at its public hearing on Tuesday, Feb. 21 at 7 p.m. at Burnaby City Hall.
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