City heritage staff are recommending that city council protect the former Gray Coach Terminal on Bay St. just north of Dundas St. W. with a heritage designation status.
Built in 1931 in an Art Deco style, the bus station "is an early example of a modern motor coach terminal, among the first of its type to be designed and constructed for this purpose in Canada," their report said.
At the time, the report points out, Gray Coach Lines was a subsidiary of the Toronto Transportation Commission, a predecessor of the modern TTC.
It operated interurban bus service between Toronto and other urban centres in Canada and the northern U.S., and in the 1930s, when the bus terminal was built, was one of Canada's largest bus operators.
At its peak, Gray Coach served a 2,500-kilometre network of routes involving points as far-flung as Sudbury and New York City.
"The property recalls the era when motor coaches were introduced as a new means of mass transportation on the highways that were being built across North America," senior heritage planner Mary L. MacDonald wrote in the report.
The Toronto Coach Terminal, as it came to be known, stopped operating as a bus terminal in 2021.
The building has been listed on the city's heritage register since 1987. This offers a lower level of protection than a designation, which means that heritage must be considered in making a decision about a demolition application. A designation is much stricter: it forbids demolition, or changes to specific details or characteristics of the building.
A deadline created by a provincial law under Bill 23 will see some buildings lose heritage status in the near future.
Under Bill 23, properties that are categorized as listed, rather than fully designated can only hold that status for two years. After that, the property will lose its listed status if it is not fully designated. The property is then ineligible to regain heritage status for another five years.
Toronto has about 3,800 listed historic properties, some of which have had that status for nearly 50 years.
In early 2024, plans for a 42-story building at the location were killed by a provincial ministerial zoning order protecting clear helicopter flight paths to nearby hospitals.
A revised plan calls for a 16-storey building, which in combination with another building on Elizabeth St., will add 873 new residential units. The project will preserve the historic bus station, while also creating a paramedic dispatch centre.
The recommendation will be considered by the city's heritage committee on Friday March 21, and if successful will go from there to council.
"For many passengers, the Gray Coach Terminal would have been their first impression of the city," MacDonald wrote.
"Over the course of its 90-year history, the terminal's entrance hall and waiting areas formed a backdrop for people's memories, playing host to innumerable goodbyes and reunions between families and friends."
With files from Aidan Chamandy.
For 90 years, the Bay St. bus terminal "formed a backdrop for people's memories, playing host to innumerable goodbyes and reunions between families and friends." PATRICK CAIN/VILLAGE MEDIA
