“I’m passionate about heritage,” said Rashid Mordadi, who owns the site and who filed the request for demolition last November. “If I’m not, this building would have already been burned down.”

Sipping tea in the former classroom where he runs a printing-press business, Mordadi related his struggles in keeping alive a heritage building in Richmond Hill with what he sees as a lack of support from the city.

He bought the schoolhouse property, along with the printing business, from his former boss seven years after emigrating from Iran with his family in 1999 and working hard as a roofer, Mordadi said

Businesses were booming and taxes were reasonable at first, Mordadi said, until he was slapped with a property tax bill that tripled four years later.

It was one of many hard-learned lessons about the price to pay for owning a heritage-designated building.

As taxes increased, the printing business started to decline — partly due to the construction on Yonge Street in front of his store, he said.

Last year, his tax bill hit almost $19,000.

“I’m drowning in debt,” he said. “I can survive with the piece of bread today, but my kids cannot survive.”

Mordadi filed the request for demolition as a last resort after spending tens of thousands of dollars on maintenance on top of the skyrocketing tax levies.

He said he's had no assistance from Richmond Hill for the past 14 years.

While sympathetic to public sentiment over the heritage building, Mordadi urged people to put themselves in his shoes.

“Come here and feel and then judge,” Mordadi said, bundled in layers of jackets as he tried to keep warm in the one-room house with its word-burning stove.

With no water and sewerage hookups, and higher density developments sprouting all around, the property has become a tough sell, the landowner said.

To him, there isn't much heritage value to the building aside from the exterior brick work.

But Mordadi said none of his proposals to the city — such as relocating or incorporating the building — have borne fruit.

“I sympathize with him,” Councillor David West said. “But heritage buildings provide links to the past and provide a great deal of architectural characters and uniqueness, because nobody has the Jefferson Schoolhouse. Only us.”

Its dichromatic brick exterior and simple gable roof are a “rare example” of mid-19th century schoolhouse architecture, the staff report stated.

West, who sits on the Richmond Hill Heritage Committee, supported an amendment put forward by Councillor Karen Cilevitz, who suggested council should “be interested in a potential purchase” of the Jefferson Schoolhouse.

The amendment fell through due to the deferral motion.

“I think time might run out,” Tachtaul said in response to the deferral motion, which is set less than two weeks before the Feb. 25 deadline for the demolition request.

STORY BEHIND THE STORY: There has been a public outcry for saving the century-old heritage building since the landowner request to demolish it. Reporter Sheila Wang talked to the owner, councillors, staff, advocates to find out what has led to the dilemma regarding the Jefferson Schoolhouse.