Well, there goes a $250,000 - 300,000 investment down the tube. Can you imagine?

I grew up not very far from there and all my life it was a heavily industrialized area of Meat Packers including Swifts and Canada Packers.

Likewise, I have little sympathy. Did the people who bought there not visit the area? I would not buy a house on a former industrial lot. What chemicals were used and what chemicals remain?

And certainly they would have seen there is still a lot of heavy industry in the area. Right on the corner of St. Clair and Weston is a huge plant that used to house a meat packers. I do not know what is in there now. But it is still there with a nice cedar fence all around.

quote:

---

The slaughterhouse was there first. Deal with it.

---

quote:

---

The question is Yuppies or Mushrooms/Slaughterhouses; which ones stink the worst?

---

I know people don't expect to be lied to, but wow. A slaughterhouse. I mean, a SLAUGHTERHOUSE. I'd be thinking long and hard about that one if I knew it was there.

Only thing is, in Toronto, you usually put your down payment down long before they even start digging up the land - they sell a lot of those condos before the first brick is laid. So it might not occur to the person when going through the model home (which probably isn't next door to the slaughterhouse) that there might be a problem with industrial neighbours.

Imagine my surprise when I found out that some mommies and daddies buy houses just so they can get richer, as opposed to living in those houses.

Fast forward to today.

I've NEVER understood the whining and snivelling and carping that goes on and on and on about property value.

You'd think that all the dorks that raise holy hell about property values would be GLAD when they drop, since it means lower property taxes if the city doesn't raise the mill rate.

Check out this one:

quote:

---

$209,900 Located in W01.

This two storey, detached home has 3 bedroom(s), 2 bath(s). Rooms include a family room, dining room, master bedroom, 1 kitchen(s). Property located near: SOUTH OF BLOOR. Perly's Map: 14 E 45.
Property #: LU4774

---

We just went through a big stink out running a new mega-highway through a number of communities. All the home owners were angry to find out they'll be living close to the road.

The only problem is that the road had been on the books for over 35 years. They built the communities with enough room to put in the road without needing to knock any homes down, move roads, etc.

Or maybe I'll buy a surplus nuclear missle silo in the US somewhere. Yeah! That'd be cool!

Or maybe I'll get a decommissioned warship or submarine from the Canadian navy and turn it into one hell of a houseboat!

Where does your food comes from? Underground? Factories in the ocean? From the sky?

This may be a bit off track, but, for our meat-based soceity, abattoirs are necessary. It makes sense to keep them in urban areas where the highest population density resides. By no means am I condoning the practices of slaughterhouses or of our meat-based culture, but I am saying that as we are dependent on meat, for now, it doesn't make sense to me to marginalize owners of these factories. ONLY if we all commit to vegetarianism does this make sense to me.

I know of people who live near King and Tecumseh in Toronto, a half a block from a slaughterhouse, and NEVER heard them complain. And, they ARE vegetarians. But I guess as they are not property owners, they are insignificant.

It's a toughie. In the end, I'll side with the slaughterhouse.

quote:

---

I've NEVER understood the whining and snivelling and carping that goes on and on and on about property value.

---

I dunno, it would be nice to know that one could afford to buy a home of equivalent quality if one were forced to sell one's current home. When you spend that much money on something, you don't want its resale value going down the drain. For most people, it's not really about making money. It's about holding on to the money they already have, and keeping up with inflation.

If property values drop, that means a homeowner will have to go into debt again if they ever decide to move. That ain't cool.

Look, some people make bad decisions and don't check shit out fully enough.

Tough freakin' noogies.

It's not my job to babysit them when they whine about how horrid it is that they'll have to sell at a loss.

If the developer deliberately mislead them, then surely there is some culpability on their part.

Seems to me we are getting so used to lying that it has become an accepted business practice, particularly in real estate.

I think the law has something to say about that.

Something in the fraud parts.

And, there is no reason for a factory to stink these days, it's all a matter of how much it will cost to put in the needed environmental controls.

That having been said, there is also culpability on the municipality. I work in a large stamping plant, and predictably there is some noise associated with that. When the plant was built, it was on the outskirts of town, in the east end where all the zoning was heavy industrial.

Some bozos in planning decided to allow residential housing close by. In fact, now there is a new subdivision across Clarke Side Road, adjacent to the CN mainline.

AND the city of London just passed an emergency plan to create serviced industrial land.

quote:

---

Or maybe I'll get a decommissioned warship or submarine from the Canadian navy and turn it into one hell of a houseboat!

Oh, the possibilities!

---

If you don't like your neighbours, you can always torpedo their house boats.

quote:

---

Give me an inner city house any day. Its great being able to walk to work.

---

Agreed. Wholeheartedly. Hell, MORE than wholeheartedly, if that's possible.

BUT

OTOH, we are fortunate to live in healthy, vibrant cities. I wouldn't be singing the same tune if I was a resident of the Bronx, Brooklyn or Queens in the 1950s and the idiots in city government put a big-ass, unnecessary freeway right through my neighbourhood. Who wouldn't want to flee to the burbs in that kind of situation?

So much for the slaughterhouse...

quote:

---

Residents near a west-end slaughterhouse that burned for hours were allowed to return to their homes yesterday.

The news is less positive for workers at the plant, though, after a five-alarm blaze that officials say will force the demolition of New York Pork and Meat Exchange.

The mammoth blaze began early Monday and kept fire crews busy through the day with repeated flare-ups. The sturdily designed building made the job more difficult, with firefighters having to break through metre-thick walls in some places.

The fire was completely extinguished late Monday but the site, near the intersection of St. Clair Avenue and Runnymede Avenue, remains dangerous, slowing the investigation of the fire marshal.

---

I'm updating this thread because while apartment hunting recently, I looked at a townhouse that was RIGHT NEXT DOOR to this place. Needless to say, I didn't take it, for reasons I spelled out in the other thread.

I was joking with a couple of rabble staff I was telling this to, that when one of them told me that the burnt down building was the slaughterhouse in this old dispute, that suddenly I had visions of the area residents, kind of like the residents of Whoville on Christmas Day, joining hands in a circle around the slaughterhouse as it burned down.