The Matador Will Stand

After intense public backlash over a boneheaded plan to expropriate the storied Matador Club and obliterate it into a paved slab, the Toronto Parking Authority has backed down.

Thanks in large part to the Save The Matador movement, today's afternoon TPA meeting experienced some expropriation of its own when about forty supporters descended upon Meeting Room B to vociferously protest the the Council-sanctioned demolition. The matter will return to City Council to be officially reversed.

According to Posted Toronto, one man who showed up wouldn't cry any tears if the Matador was turned into a parking lot. Matador neighbour George Ruivo, the owner of automotive audio shop Number 1 Sound, claims that the club is a noisy blight on the neighbourhood. We think that tricked-out, bombastic subwoofers in cars are a blight on the streetscape too, but whatever.

Though owners Ann and Charlene Dunn are ready to sell the venue, which won't likely continue to exist in its current incarnation, we're happy to see that the TPA's expropriation scheme to make way for twenty parked cars has hit the skids—but Torontonians should be horrified that such a plan ever reached Council approval in the first place.

Photo by inventor_77 from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.