with apologies for cross postings
List members will recognize the familiar problems outlined in Marites 
Sison's article below about the Anglican General Synod Archives.

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a  c  c     w  e  b      n  e  w  s
The Anglican Church of Canada
http://www.anglican.ca/
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Anglican Journal News: Church delays signing off on problematic new  
building

MARITES N. SISON
STAFF WRITER
May 31, 2006 - Editor’s note: This is an updated version of a story  
that appears in the June issue of the Anglican Journal.

Two years after moving into a new building, the church’s national  
office has postponed closing the deal on its new offices at 80 Hayden  
St., Toronto, until it sorts out a problem with the developer  
involving the repair of a leaking vent in the mechanical room, which  
has put the church archives at risk and shut down air conditioning in  
the building.

The problem was brought to the attention of Philmor Ltd., a Toronto- 
based company specializing in mixed-use residential and office  
complexes, last fall. (General Synod, the national office of the  
Anglican Church of Canada, negotiated office space at Philmor’s 80  
Hayden property as a condition of the $3.65 million sale in 2002 of  
the Jarvis building. Staff moved into the new building in June 2004.)

In an interview, General Synod treasurer Peter Blachford said,  
“Philmor has acknowledged that that is (its) cost to get that fixed.”  
He added: “We’re going to get it fixed. We all want air conditioning  
in the summer.” He said that the repair – which could take three  
working days – has been delayed for more than six months now since  
Philmor had been negotiating with the contractor who installed the  
vent to get it fixed.

As of May 30, however, the situation had not been addressed,  
prompting General Synod to shut down its offices as well as the  
Anglican Book Centre, its retail arm, because of the heat – the  
environment ministry had issued a heat alert and smog advisory, with  
temperatures reaching a record-breaking 34 C. Until the leak is fixed  
air conditioning cannot be turned on since it causes water to leak  
into the archives vault. In a catch-22 situation, though, the  
archival collection also faces the risk of being destroyed from heat  
and humidity if the air conditioner is not turned on.

Archbishop Andrew Hutchison, the primate (national archbishop), told  
staff on May 30 that General Synod was in “serious” discussions with  
the developer to have the problem fixed.

In an interview, Mr. Blachford said General Synod would not assume  
ownership of the building until the leak is addressed.

General Synod archivist Nancy Hurn has expressed “great concern” that  
the leaking vent in the mechanical room, which is housed above the  
General Synod archives vault, put the church’s collection of  
historical materials at great risk of being damaged. The extensive  
collection includes paper, newsprint, photographic prints/negatives,  
microfilm, motion picture film, audio and videotapes, digitized  
documents and images.

 “The standard accepted temperature for the storage of a mixed media  
archives is 67 degrees Fahrenheit (19.4 C) plus or minus two degrees.  
The standard accepted relative humidity for storage of archival  
material is 47 per cent minus 2 per cent,” said Ms. Hurn. She said  
that a “stable and controllable” environment was necessary for these  
materials, otherwise, “significant fluctuation of the temperature and/ 
or humidity levels accelerates (their) deterioration” since they  
absorb and release moisture. On May 30, the heat in the mixed media  
archives reached 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 C).

Jim Cullen, the former General Synod treasurer who is currently  
acting comptroller, said he had been aware that the mechanical room  
was situated above the archives vault and saw nothing wrong with its  
placement there. “It (mechanical room) shouldn’t be posing problems,”  
he said, adding that it was “the ideal place, the right place” to put  
it because the floors were specially-designed to hold extra weight  
and also, it faced a back wall. Mr. Cullen was the chief negotiator  
for the sale of the old building and the acquisition of the new one.

“I don’t think we had considered the possibility of the leaking,”  
added Archdeacon Jim Boyles, former General Synod general secretary,  
who was involved in the moving process. “In hindsight, it makes no  
sense at all to have a mechanical room on top of archives. But at  
that time, we had thought that the building would be constructed so  
that there wouldn’t be those kinds of leaks.”

With the slew of construction woes encountered in the new building  
(the developer’s original plan, for instance, did not provide for a  
staircase from the third to the fourth floor), Mr. Boyles  
acknowledged that General Synod should have hired a project manager  
“at an earlier time, who could have kept an eye, a closer eye on  
developments as they went along.” He added, “Those are things you  
learn on hindsight and I don’t think it’s likely that the church will  
be in the building business again for a long time.”

Still, said Mr. Boyles, despite all the aggravations moving was still  
the best thing. “The old building was just becoming more and more  
difficult to live in. It was very costly.”

Earlier, Mr. Blachford said he was looking at closing the deal on the  
building by the end of May.

“We’ve made predictions before and I always get skewered, but I will  
try again,” said General Synod treasurer Peter Blachford in an  
interview. “I would hope that assuming everything goes the way we  
hope it’s going, we will be able to close the building by the end of  
May.”

Mr. Blachford said General Synod’s lawyers and Philmor had addressed  
a “big issue” that had stood in the way of closing the deal on 80  
Hayden. He said lawyers for both sides had to sort out issues  
relating to the payment of taxes. He said that the developer has been  
holding off paying property taxes until the city government acted on  
its application for a residential, instead of multi-residential tax  
classification. (General Synod offices are housed in the first four  
floors of the 21-storey building; the rest of the 17 storeys are  
privately-owned condominium apartments.)

The developer wants a residential classification “which means each  
owner of each unit will then get their individual tax bill from the  
city,” said Mr. Blachford.

“It didn’t help our scenario; our taxes were paid, although the money  
is being held by our lawyer,” he added. “But we had to satisfy our  
title insurance company so that our bankers would be happy that we  
were buying a property that didn’t have a huge tax debt attached to  
it. We think we’ve got that solved now … In terms of legalities, that  
was the only thing holding us down.”