Back in 2008, after an arsonist torched the warehouse at the S/E corner of Richmond and Walker Road, architect Matt Woods commented to me that it appears there’s an assault on zero lot line buildings, built right up to the sidewalk, along Walker Road in Walkerville.

This type of building construction appears to be a relic of the past.  It places buildings close to the road creating a more human-scaled environment, as opposed to todays style of setting them to the rear of their lots with vast seas of asphalt between them and the road.

The assault continues.

Todays fire at the old Everfresh Juice building (Party Warehouse, Clean Depot) continues the trend started when its owner, Ashok Sood, went against heritage protocol and prematurely demolished the beautiful old Seagrave firetruck factory located across the street (Sood then went on to use the property as an outdoor storage yard for old industrial equipment - a real crowd-pleaser in a historic neighbourhood).  The trend continued with the aforementioned warehouse on Richmond and Walker as well as the Bank of Montreal building at Ottawa and Walker Roads.

There’s not many buildings left that preserve the heritage value of this road.  Let’s hope that this isn’t a concerted effort to eliminate these heritage structures, as Walker Road is really looking like a dump.