The Battle Royal of Queen Street. July 8th.

That day our lordly mayor and his crew will consider the Shaw Festival’s request to bloat the quaint, ancient Royal George Theatre into a sprawling complex.

If approved it would eat four existing buildings, three of them historic, soar five storeys high, host a restaurant to compete with those now existing, throttle the main drag during 30 months of construction and extend for half a block around the corner, treating neighbours to permanent loading docks, ramps and garbage bins.

“A massive reconstruction of inappropriate size, location and an invasion of historic residential properties,” says longtime NOTLer Susan Chapman. “It will open doors for further commercial development for all residents.”

On the weekend the Prideaux Street resident started an email campaign to get bums in chairs at the coming meeting as the $85-million behemoth (a third of that money’s coming from Doug Ford) is debated. Already council has exempted it from a development freeze in Old Town. The Shaw’s special, apparently.

There’s a Facebook campaign now launched as well. Meanwhile, the rebels in the NOTL Residents’ Association are backing redevelopment of the site. But not this plan. “We do not support the present proposal as it appears inconsistent with the heritage nature of the district,” says Stuart McCormack. “We are putting together a position paper on the matter and a delegation will be made to council.”

Others agree. “I find this change to what is effectively the prominent centre of Old Town disproportionate and once again, indicative of the town’s consistently contradictory, random sense of historical assessment,” Mark Smith writes me. And he wonders why we need a Mississauga-sized industrial theatre complex smack in the middle of our heritage heart.

“To address the required theatre/additional seating capacity, I’d look to the Shaw property on Queen’s Parade which presents as enormous,” he says.

“It’s adjacent to what are huge, likely federal, open fields on one side, an actor’s housing project on another side and across the street from a tired-looking seemingly empty building on yet still more open ground. Although I may be unaware of important factors that invalidate my focus toward this end of town, am I missing what seems to me to be so obvious?”

Dunno. But the Shaw is fighting back.

“The building must be demolished as the foundation is failing,” CEO Tim Jennings says in response to last week’s column.

“It was built in 1916 as a temporary building … we have been mitigating it for 25-plus years and the structure can no longer be mitigated in any reasonable way. Our options are to demolish and redo the theatre to 21st-century requirements (and looking beyond the 21st century) or close the facility and sell the property to other kinds of developers.”

Jennings argues that neighbours have been consulted, buildings to be razed are insignificant, the new structure will only be a couple of metres taller than the tip of the existing one, that elevators, washrooms and a huge lobby are required along with facilitating 24-foot trucks, and that they have “chosen” to exceed code and overbuild for generations yet unborn.

Now, this is not an anti-artistic rant. The Shaw is famous and worthy. It brings millions into the town and region. Last year it entertained 239,000 visitors, a third from across the line. There are 600 employees, a yearly budget of $40 million and, despite a smallish operating loss, the non-profit’s foundation has over $30 million in its beefy investment portfolio.

So, clearly, this is an economic force. And a political one, as shown by the unheard-of contribution from Ontario’s Conservative government (most of an entire department’s grant budget is being directed to the Shaw alone).

But does that mean it gets a pass on erecting the biggest single structure in the historic Old Town, bringing down the iconic Royal George façade, gobbling up half a block of residences, building a 61-foot-high tower and forever replacing clapboard and carved wood with concrete and glass?

Lately this town has been bristling with concern over hotel creep, ersatz replica architecture, unhosted Airbnb disruption, heritage loss and the gnawing-away at the very authenticity that makes Niagara-on-the-Lake unique.

Dear Shaw Festival, we want you to stay and prosper. But there’s a reason you’re here in paradise and not in Brampton.

Don’t blow it.

Garth Turner is a NOTL resident, journalist, author, wealth manager and former federal MP and minister. garth@garth.ca