CELPIP Reading Part 4 Practice Test: The Starlight Theatre’s Future in Harlow Bay Debate

For over eighty years, the glowing sign of the Starlight Theatre has presided over Harlow Bay’s main street. The cinema went dark in 2019, and its owner now wishes to demolish it. Because the building appears on the municipal heritage register, demolition requires council’s authorization, a decision that has polarized the community.

Glen Moreau, who purchased the Starlight in 2016, absorbed three years of losses before surrendering. The roof leaks, the heating system is irreparable, and an engineer’s report estimates full restoration at more than $4 million. He envisions six storeys containing 40 apartments, eight at below-market rents, above ground-floor shops. “People are attached to that sign, so I’ll restore it and mount it on the new structure,” he offers.

Ines Halvorsen, who chairs the Harlow Bay Heritage Society, considers that gesture beside the point. “Saving the sign and losing the building is like keeping the frame and throwing away the painting,” she contends, noting that scarcely any 1930s architecture survives on the main street. Her society’s 2021 campaign for a community arts centre has so far accumulated about $150,000. “No individual proprietor could reasonably shoulder the restoration,” she concedes, “but provincial heritage grants and local donors could bridge the shortfall, given time and a sympathetic council.”

Daniel Osei, who heads a tenants’ association, frames the dispute differently. With a rental vacancy rate below one per cent and rents outpacing wages for most of a decade, young families and seniors are being driven from town. “If the façade can remain and the apartments proceed, why choose? Forced to, I’d pick homes every time.”

Councillor Leah Fontaine has proposed precisely that hybrid: retain the brick front, with its original doors and ticket window, construct the apartments behind it, and waive about $300,000 in development fees. Moreau remains unpersuaded. Preservation would add roughly $900,000, he calculates. “Even with the waiver, something’s got to give, and the eight units priced below market would be first to go.”

Mayor Bernard Tessier has declined to commit himself before staff complete their report, leaving both camps to lobby councillors individually.

My first movie was at the Starlight, so nobody can accuse me of indifference. 6. Choose…Unlike Ms. Halvorsen, I’d let the building goUnlike Ms. Halvorsen, I’d make the owner payLike Mr. Osei, I’d refuse more apartmentsLike Ms. Halvorsen, I’d let the building go. A leaking shell is no living history. Her society has had years to 7. Choose…take down the old signlist it as heritagefind a new ownerfund its arts centre, with scant result.

Councillor Fontaine’s compromise sounds appealing, but on Mr. Moreau’s figures it would 8. Choose…cost the town $300,000 in feesadd a new roof to itscrap the below-market unitsleave the $4 million bill untouched. As for priorities, 9. Choose…reopening the old cinemaputting roofs over people’s headsreducing development feesfounding a cultural hub comes first.

And Mr. Moreau has offered to 10. Choose…rent every unit below marketfinance an arts centrewait a yearmove the restored sign, a fair way of honouring the theatre’s memory. Council should let him proceed. The Starlight gave this town decades of Saturday afternoons, and I will miss it as much as anyone, but nostalgia is a poor basis for a planning decision. Every winter the old roof lets in a little more rain, and nobody’s memories are improved by it.