There will be no last-minute reprieve by London city council for the heritage home at 100 Stanley St. that was unofficially dubbed “Nan’s House” after its last owner Nan Finlayson. On Wednesday, Council considered the engineering department’s request to demolish the small yellow-brick heritage home to accommodate work to widen Wharncliffe Rd. under the CN Rail tracks just north of Horton Street. The four-lane arterial road narrows to just three lanes beneath the aging rail overpass. Finlayson sat and watched council debate the fate of her former home from the public gallery. Starting in 2016, a public campaign fought to stop the city from taking Finlayson’s home, but she eventually she agreed to sell in 2020. “I do believe that there is an opportunity to save this building. We don’t need to rush into making decisions right now,” Coun. Anna Hopkins told council colleagues. A report to the Planning and Environment Committee had stated, “the proposed construction method for the CN Bridge has changed, reducing the original justification for the removal of the heritage house from the protected heritage property at 100 Stanley St.” “The cost of preservation is going to far exceed the cost of demolition,” Deputy Mayor Shawn Lewis countered, “The city is growing and we need to move a major transportation bottleneck out of the way to keep people going.” Kelly Scherr, Deputy City Manager of Environment and Infrastructure told council that it is highly unlikely that alternative construction methods could prevent the house from being severely damaged during the replacement of the rail overpass and road widening. “While we could spend a great deal of money doing so and exploring that, the only way to find out is to go to a tender process, see what is proposed by a contractor, and then make a decision,” Scherr told council. “At that point, we’re going to be substantially down the road with respect to investing costs into a design.” A motion to refer the matter to a future meeting was defeated, and the demolition request was approved. No firm date has been set for the demolition to begin. Citing steep increases in cost estimates, council previously removed the widening project from the 2024-2027 multi-year budget. Scherr said the demolition would ensure the project is “shovel-ready” in the event funding from senior levels of government is made available.
