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Guild Inn awaits some TLC
Peter Small, Staff Reporter
Two private groups have hired architects to study ways of operating the crumbling Guild Inn, but the city won't know until today whether they have committed to their proposals in writing, a Toronto councillor says.
David Soknacki, whose Scarborough East ward includes the historic lakeside park and empty hotel, told a meeting yesterday that today at noon is the deadline for responses to the city's request for proposals for potential operators of the inn and its surrounding property.
"This is the last best hope," Soknacki told an annual meeting of the Guild Renaissance Group, a non-profit organization dedicated to restoring the site, once a thriving artists' colony.
If no private sector proponent steps forward today, several other organizations and institutions have said they would be interested in talking to the city about the 36-hectare property, the Ward 43 councillor said.
"It's not as if — if there are no envelopes (with proposals today) — the buildings will fall into ruin," he said.
He pledged that the city will not adopt any plans without extensive community consultation, including a meeting with the Guildwood Village residents' association in May.
Yesterday the 50 people at the meeting got a look at some of the city's ideas for the property, including restoration of the historically designated Bickford Inn, a new low-rise hotel extension, artists' studios, a new theatre and art gallery, a reinstated historical hedge maze, culinary school, wedding photography pavilion and pier.
Lin Whitman, president of the Guild Renaissance Group, told the meeting there has been some vandalism and police have promised to step up patrols.
If no proposals from the private sector are adopted, the renaissance group will have to swing into high gear with its own ideas, Whitman told the meeting.
The group is already proposing a $1 million refurbishing of an outdoor Greek theatre on the grounds.
A Guild Inn employee who attended yesterday's meeting complained that workers still had unresolved issues with a previous lessee who operated the inn.
Annette Drew, who worked as a banquet waitress, said in an interview she believes the city chose to ignore the conditions employees were working under at the property.
"It's falling apart. There are ceilings cracking, flooding," Drew said.
From the 1930s until the 1980s, the beautiful grounds atop the Scarborough Bluffs were a hive of cultural activity.
Rosa and Spencer Clark, who owned the property, created the Guild of All Arts there in the 1930s, providing artists with a haven. A.Y. Jackson and A.J. Casson were among its visitors and Sorel Etrog created many of his sculptures there.
The Clarks added guest rooms and dining facilities in the 1950s to support the artists' colony. They expanded the Guild Inn in 1965 to include a modern seven-storey building, now deteriorated and unsightly.
Spencer Clark began collecting pieces of Toronto's fine old buildings before they came under the wrecker's ball. He restored them and placed them in the gardens.The Clarks sold their inn and surrounding land to the province and Metro Toronto in 1978 and it became a public park.
The city has been responsible for operating the inn since the early 1980s, but it is now costing taxpayers $400,000 a year. The city closed the inn for the winter Nov. 1 and did not reopen it April 1, as it has in the past.
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