Then he adds: "Everybody loves heritage, but nobody wants to pay for it."

Actually, Farhi is one of the few who have paid for it. He put $3.5 million of his own money into a painstaking restoration of London's old Capitol Theatre and the neighbouring Bowles Building on downtown Dundas St. and recently reached an agreement with the city that will pay him $187,000 a year to lease the space for city offices for 20 years.

"At the rates I had to pay, that does not even cover my interest payments. In fact, when the city lease expires in 20 years, I will actually owe more on the building than I do now," Farhi exclaims.

"But I made a personal commitment to this project because I believe having more city offices on Dundas St. is the best way to move downtown revitalization forward and support the growth of the downtown business tax base. Subsidizing this project is my 'gift' to the downtown and the people of London," he explains.

"I challenge other London landlords to make a similar commitment to our city's future," he adds. "Talk is cheap, let's see some action!"

If Londoners in particular and Canadians in general don't press government to take the lead and enact meaningful measures, such as substantial tax credits or subsidies for the higher rents needed to cover the cost of restoration work, then the problem will go away, Farhi knows.

There won't be any left, at least worth saving. Nobody's making heritage buildings these days. And every year, the number of survivors is whittled down by neglect, rot, fire and vandalism.

"What did talk, talk, talk do for Alma College?" Farhi asks. "Nothing." Teen vandals burned the St. Thomas landmark to the ground in 2008.

"Look what happened in Clinton," Farhi says. In January, fire destroyed the third main street heritage building in that town in the last three years.

And Clinton is only one of a long list of Southwestern Ontario towns where fire has destroyed entire blocks of historic buildings.

"Once they're gone, they're gone forever," Farhi says.

Politicians at all levels sing the praises of preservation, but their own policies often amount to little more than empty gestures, Farhi says.

Sometimes they're flat-out contradictory - such as when punishing tax increases are the first reward for saving some stately old pile, taxes that immediately remove the building from the realm of competitive rents.

"It's Catch-22. It's a vicious circle," says Farhi, who for 20 years has been struggling to convince municipal, provincial and federal governments that they have a stake in saving heritage buildings, not only from a taxation standpoint but also as valuable tourist assets, beacons for the revival of moribund city centres and objects of community, provincial and national pride.

Farhi should know of what he speaks. Apart from the traditional churches, he is the biggest owner of heritage properties in London. "People who care about preserving our architectural heritage have to understand that it takes a lot more than wishing, hoping, and even passing bylaws to make it happen.

"It is a very expensive undertaking in almost every instance, and layers of expensive bureaucracy and unrealistic tax policies are making such preservation more and more problematic as time goes by," he says.

Farhi has 40 heritage properties in his London portfolio alone. In total, Farhi Holdings Corp. (FHC) owns and manages more than four million square feet of old and new office, retail, industrial and residential space from Windsor to Cornwall. By one recent estimate, he owns about 100 properties in London, about 140 provincewide.

His historic properties stand as milestones marking the history of southern Ontario from a raw frontier full of tree stumps and wood smoke, to the downtown towers and rolling fields of suburbia of the 21st Century.

A lot of that history has been lost, but London historian Dan Brock thinks a lot more would have vanished if it weren't for the efforts of preservationists, of whom Farhi is the most prominent in Southwestern Ontario.

"He's one of the good guys when it comes to saving our heritage. He has done a tremendous amount," Brock says.

The answer to heritage preservation isn't the politically correct quick-fix solution of "passing bylaws to force landlords to maintain or restore heritage properties," Farhi says.

"In the long run, it will not work. Not only is it unfair, it is counterproductive - who will want to buy, own or restore our old buildings? And the lack of a resale market will sink the value," he says. "Government simply should not be able to destroy the value of private property in this manner, no matter how noble they may conceive their actions to be."

From the city's perspective, London Mayor Anne Marie DeCicco-Best says "there's always been conflict between (heritage) advocates and owners" who can't afford expensive work.

She said cities simply don't have the resources "to save them all" and "higher levels of government are going to have to play a major role" in funding restorations.

In January, Farhi opened his confidential files to illustrate some of the unique but endangered properties FHC owns. He considers that they really belong to the people and he is really their custodian.

He also wants to show the costly, painstaking work required to bring heritage buildings up to the demanding levels of modern building codes, often in the face of unexpected problems.

"You never know what's behind the wall," he says.

For example, he had to bring in heavy machinery to excavate nearly 2.5 metres below floor level to replace the Capitol Theatre's foundations.

Stones brought in from Owen Sound, each custom made, had to be laid by hand and given time to settle. His crews had to deal with brick walls three courses thick.

That handsome facade visible from Dundas St. had to be bolted to the main structure.

"You have to have deep pockets to do this work, and you have to know what you're doing," Farhi says.

"Most of all, you need a tenant. You must be able to find a tenant who understands and appreciates the value of occupying a heritage building. They are not generally in great supply," Farhi adds.

Aggravating the problem, he says, is that federal and provincial governments won't rent space for more than competitive market rates, will not occupy old buildings with asbestos unremoved, or which are not totally accessible.

And that, Farhi says, means many old residences will never be economically salvageable, leaving landlords little choice but to demolish them or convert them to student housing.

Even at that, the material and expert work are only 30% of the investment, he says. "The other 70% is love, the will to get the job done."

But 20 years of butting heads with politicians and bureaucrats has taken something off the glow of Farhi's passion for the past.

"I'm getting tired of it. I'm starting to think maybe I'm doing something wrong," Farhi says.

Such as pinning his hopes on convincing governments to commit themselves to more than lip service to the idea of heritage preservation.

And ways have to be found to cut through the hedge of red tape, the barbed wire of bureaucracy, behind which officials hunker down and fire off decisions - which Farhi sees as often bewildering and contradictory - that can halt good intentions in their tracks.

"Bureaucracy kills heritage," Farhi says.

"It seems that the closer you get to completion, the more new rules and regulations come into play, sometimes appearing almost from nowhere, and driving the costs up every time.

"And then the taxman comes along and bangs in the last nail."

Farhi's two current pet peeves are his ongoing frustration with London Health Sciences Centre's decision to locate a satellite renal dialysis unit at Westmount Shopping Centre in the city's south end, rather than in a "perfectly suitable" vacant heritage property in the city centre, and bureaucrats who are blocking his efforts to give new life to another of his prime holdings, the Massey mansion at 519 Jarvis St. in Toronto Farhi says he was dumfounded by the LHSC decision to go to Westmount. In his view, LHSC "has a responsibility to this community that parallels that which you owe to your patients."

Farhi told LHSC's president and chief executive Cliff Nordal in a blunt e-mail that it didn't matter who owned the downtown heritage property. "What does make a difference is seeing LHSC turn its back on the heart of the community that supports it."

Nordal did not respond to calls seeking commnt.

Farhi now hopes Fanshawe College will step forward as a tenant of the old Central Library, reinforcing the college's presence downtown.

Few Canadian buildings are more steeped in history than Toronto's 519 Jarvis. The mansion was home to the Massey family, famed for farm machinery. Actor Raymond Massey and his brother, Vincent, a future governor-general, grew up in the house.

The building's most recent use was as a school, but when Farhi bought it and lined up another school as a tenant, "they (Toronto bureaucrats) said 'No, it has reverted to residential zoning,' " Farhi says. "Now, what am I supposed to do with it? Turn it into student housing for their beer parties?"

What's getting Farhi down, perhaps, is what he calls the "bittersweet" ending to one of his longest campaigns, the 20-year struggle to get the Ontario government to agree that St. Thomas and Elgin County's pressing need for more court space could best be answered by using a building built for that purpose in the first place - the majestic 150-year-old Elgin County Courthouse.

Farhi had bought it, repaired it, and maintained it for two decades before Ontario Realty Corp., the province's real estate arm, agreed recently to buy it back.

So the building has been saved, but Farhi feels he has lost part of his family, a stately structure he calls "my baby."

"I don't fall in love with heritage buildings anymore," he says.

Pat Currie is a London writer