Photo from Friends of Kensington Market’s Facebook page.

It’s an awkward situation. In October, city council, with the support of Councillor Adam Vaughan (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina), approved a 15-storey condo at 297 College Street, to be developed by a company called Tribute Communities. Now, months after the fact, some residents and businesspeople in Kensington Market, just south of the site, are suddenly up in arms over the building, which they believe will include a neighbourhood-destroying element: a Loblaws supermarket, lodged in a planned 20,000 square foot second-floor retail space.

Sylvia Lassam, a seven-year Kensington resident who owns a home on Bellevue Avenue, is one of the people leading the fight against Loblaws. She believes that a supermarket would steal business away from the many green grocers and dry-goods merchants that line Kensington’s streets. “The raw food sales have been the constant that keeps it a real, honest-to-god market,” she said. “And if you get a Loblaws two blocks away, what’s going to happen?”

Lassam, an archivist by profession, believes that a supermarket would leave Kensington unrecognizable, erasing its century of history as a scrappy, eclectic immigrant district. There’s some reason to believe things could unfold this way. Ever since a Loblaws opened at Queen and Portland streets, about half a kilometre from the Market, neighbourhood merchants have complained of reduced sales. Fueling suspicion in Kensington is the fact that the Portland Street Loblaws is located in a condo building developed by none other than Tribute Communities, in partnership with RioCan.

“I just can’t see how that could be good for [Kensington's small grocers],” Lassam continued. “And I think what would probably happen is that they would eventually close up, and that those storefronts would turn into more of the entertainment kind of things.” In other words, bars.

Nothing incites fear in a neighbourhood quite like the prospect of rowdy drunks desecrating its heritage, and so naturally the anti-Loblaws movement has been becoming quite a thing. A group called Friends of Kensington Market has already staged two street protests, both specifically against Loblaws.

But despite the urgent tone of the protests, even neighbourhood advocates like Lassam acknowledge that there’s no hard evidence that Loblaws wants to put a store at 297 College.

That’s right: Loblaws is no sure thing, though one gets the sense that Tribute would be perfectly happy to have the blue-chip grocer as a tenant. “We don’t have a signed lease with Loblaws, but we have been talking with Loblaws,” said Steve Deveaux, Tribute’s vice president of land development. “We’ve been talking with a number of other retailers as well.”

Apart from all that, another thing that could potentially give pause to protestors is the fact that there likely isn’t any legal way for anyone to prevent the condo from being built. Tribute went through community consultation and won zoning approval from the City. The whole process was apparently fair and transparent. Neighbourhood residents could have raised objections in 2011, and yet it wasn’t until earlier this year that Lassam and Martin Zimmerman—proprietor of Freshmart, a small grocery store in Kensington that happens to buy its goods from Loblaws—tried to challenge Tribute at the Ontario Municipal Board. Their case was weak, and they dropped it last week after the developer agreed to meet with a group of residents.

“We are absolutely stunned that this flew below the radar,” said Venetia Butler, chairperson of the Kensington Market Action Committee. “We realize that the horse has left the barn, we totally realize that.” KMAC’s attentions, she added, were focused elsewhere, on a proposal for a RioCan shopping centre on Bathurst Street, which recently had a major setback.

Even so, she believes the protest movement—with which she is deeply involved—can be effective. “Now is the ideal time to put the heat on, because presumably the landowners will have some choice in who they rent to,” she said.

Deveaux, the Tribute vice president, has been paying attention to the outcry, but he doesn’t believe in the doomsday scenario. “People are entitled to their opinion and it sounds like there would be concern over [a supermarket] going in,” he said. “There are lots of examples of chain retailers going into an area while traditional independent retailers continue to thrive. St. Lawrence Market is one example.” It’s true: there’s a Metro supermarket across the street, and yet people still flock to St. Lawrence for fresh food and old-world charm.

Deveaux couldn’t say when Tribute might be ready to reveal the identity of 297 College’s second-floor retail tenant. He expects the building to be completed, at earliest, in 2015.

Photo by Russell Sutherland from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

A year after the provincial government closed Ontario Place, the site’s future is still up for debate. While the recommendations of the official report issued by John Tory’s advisory panel last July continue to be reviewed, a group of architects, designers, and urban planners has devised an unofficial alternative vision for revitalizing the former amusement park. It’s called “Rethinking Ontario Place.”

Monday night, during a two-hour session at Innis Town Hall, residents and experts met to talk about that alternative vision. The basis of the discussion was 12 recommendations developed at a December design charrette, co-hosted by the Design Industry Advisory Committee, the Martin Prosperity Institute (MPI), and the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU).

MPI research director Kevin Stolarick outlined each recommendation before handing the floor over to two panels: one devoted to urban design, the other devoted to critiquing the charrette’s ideas.

Designer Allan Guinan, architect Tom Bessai, and landscape architect Bryce Miranda discuss a future layout for Ontario Place.

The overall vision to come out of the charrette was equal parts faddish ideas (innovation centres for research and business incubation), heritage preservation (restoring the existing buildings), nostalgia (bringing back the Forum and the free festivals and cultural programming it offered during the 1970s), improved infrastructure (better cycling, pedestrian, and transit links), and opposition to a casino at Exhibition Place. A key point that everyone agreed on was that the redevelopment process needs to be slowed down before any rash decisions are made.

Martin Prosperity Institute research director Kevin Stolarick outlines the anti-casino recommendation.

The critics’ panel disagreed with some of the charrette’s recommendations. The nostalgia factor in particular seemed to be lost on those—like economist Jim Stanford or Daniels Faculty of Architecture dean Richard Sommer—who had never experienced Ontario Place during its heyday. Sommer noted that festivals once ideal for Ontario Place have now spread around the city, while a recommendation for a diverse range of food stalls would compete with food trucks at venues like the Evergreen Brick Works and the Distillery District. He also lashed out at the anti-casino tone of the meeting. “Under what authority, and in whose interest, do you so quickly reject housing and a casino?” he wondered aloud.

The Cinesphere, sometime between 1972 and 1989. Picture by Ellis Wiley. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 124, File 9, Item 29.

Condos were a hot topic. Stanford argued against building them. He feels that a “day of reckoning” is coming for the local market, and that the government would be jumping in at a bad time. Sommer believes there’s nothing wrong with housing on the site. He pointed to the abandoned Harbour City project (also developed by Ontario Place architect Eb Zeidler) which would have placed residential areas on islands near Ontario Place. Toronto Star columnist Christopher Hume, also on the panel, said he has no reservations about condos as long as they’re well designed.

“The discussion about what to do with Ontario Place is much too premature,” Hume said. “What we have to focus on now is how do we do it.” He suggested that Ontario Place should be handed over to Waterfront Toronto, who he felt would have a better grasp on what to do with the site than the City or the province.

Photos by Jamie Bradburn/Torontoist, unless otherwise indicated.

A rendering of one of the original designs for the Fort York Bridge. The designs now under consideration are different. Image courtesy of the City.

Thursday night in the gymnasium of Niagara Street Junior Public School, residents gathered for a public consultation meeting on the long-awaited, long-delayed Fort York pedestrian bridge.

The bridge was originally planned as an S-curve shape, spanning the Kitchener and Lakeshore GO lines from the Stanley Park extension in the north to Garrison Common in the south. This came with a cost estimate of $26.269 million. Council balked at the expense and cancelled construction in May 2011. At a meeting the following November, council reinstated the project when staff came back with cheaper alignment alternatives that preserved the bridge’s original design, all of which were estimated to cost between $18 and $19.7 million. Those were the ones displayed at last night’s meeting.

The Ordnance Triangle, a new condo development going up next to the bridge, also had to be taken under consideration during the redesign. To integrate the bridge with the building, the new plans propose a grassy berm between the two rail lines, and Ordnance Triangle’s developers have applied to have that area rezoned as a park. The pedestrian bridge would be split into two bridges, with the berm between them. The future park would be part of the nearby condo development.

“The development makes the land bridge between the two bridges much more feasible than originally planned,” said Stephen Schijns, a manager of infrastructure planning for the City. “The original bridge plan in 2009 flew right over the Ordnance Triangle and didn’t touch down. It links the bridge with Liberty Village and creates that whole east-west linkage that is a tremendous attribute to the bridge. At the same time, by allowing the bridge to shrink into two separate bridges, it makes a dramatic reduction in the cost.”

But at last night’s meeting, residents paid far more attention to the proposed condo cluster: a group of three buildings going up at Ordnance Street and Strachan Avenue. The developer staged an impressive presentation involving a rendered fly-through video of what the completed neighbourhood would look like, starting from Strachan and zipping down Ordnance, following a walking path to the bridge, then around and back to Strachan.

The condos, like many being built these days, are mixed use, meaning they have retail and services at ground level. There was the fear among some of the attendees at the meeting that these buildings run the risk of becoming a cliché. The idea of having retail and service providers at street level sounds great, but some attendees expressed worry that it would end up being filled with franchises and banks. The City can’t dictate who will set up shop.

The current version of the plan for the area also includes a public pool at the western edge of the proposed park in the Ordnance Triangle. Condo residents would have easy access to it, and people passing by on the bridge could step off the path for a quick dip. Some residents were intrigued, while others thought it would be a disaster. They compared it to the small pool at Stanley Park, which is always jam-packed. The hypothetical pool would be much larger. Funding for it, however, is a long way off.

Public comments on the new bridge design are due by February 15. After that, a design review will be presented to a review panel on March 28. City council is expected to consider an addendum to the bridge’s environmental assessment in May 2013, and a 30-day public review period will follow. Construction on the bridge, however, can’t start until Metrolinx completes its work on the Kitchener rail corridor in late 2014. And so it will be a long time until we can walk or cycle from Stanley Park to the waterfront without weaving through traffic.

Photo by {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ddotg/7052055551/"}DdotG{/a} from the {a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/torontoist"}Torontoist Flickr Pool{/a}.

If you’ve been paying attention to the battles over urban planning in Toronto over the last year, you may have noticed a slight shift in the debate: while tensions over sky-high towers continue unabated, some of the most notable fights in neighbourhoods around the city are over the more modest “mid-rise” developments—ones in the 5-10 storey range—that have, until now, made up a smaller share of development.

Toronto’s still-relatively-new chief planner, Jen Keesmaat, would like to change that. Keesmaat told reporters last week that she wants to see the City change zoning regulations to automatically allow mid-rise development along Toronto’s “avenues”—a specific list of designated arterial roads, like St. Clair and Danforth, which form the spines of residential neighbourhoods but themselves are already somewhat built up. The goal is to accommodate Toronto’s growing population by increasing density while maintaining more moderately scaled neighbourhoods, distributing some development across several main streets rather than concentrating it only clusters of giant towers. Avenues, in particular, are generally streets that already have infrastructure (most notably, transit), which is what makes them good candidates for this scaled growth.

Officially, this has been one of Toronto’s planning goals for quite some time. One key problem: the City’s own zoning rules don’t currently support that vision.

The problem is a conflict between two key documents: our Official Plan (a big-picture vision, in which a municipality sets out its planning direction and a strategy for managing future growth) and our zoning bylaw, which lay out the specific rules about what a developer is allowed to build at any given location. Paul Bedford, one of Toronto’s former chief planners, distinguishes between zoning and the Official Plan simply: “the Plan is about vision, the zoning bylaw is about precision.”

Zoning determines everything about a building, from the uses it can be put to (residential, commercial, etc.) to its physical shape: its height, how much of the lot can be occupied, how much parking it needs and where on the parcel of land that parking goes, and so on. Despite the vision articulated in the Official Plan—which explicitly calls for growth along the avenues—most of the city, including large portions of those avenues, isn’t currently zoned for mid-rise buildings.

Eglinton Avenue—one of the targets for increased density in Toronto. Photo by {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/news46/2381253052/"}Tom Podolec{/a} from the {a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/torontoist"}Torontoist Flickr Pool{/a}.

This is what Keesmaat is hoping, specifically, to change. The idea is to get to the point where mid-rise construction wouldn’t need to go through the time-consuming zoning application process at all, enabling a developer who wanted to build mid-rise on an avenue to simply apply for a building permit and go, able to construct mid-rise “as of right” (i.e. without needing special permission). “We would essentially take out a whole layer in the process, which is quite time consuming, and for developers quite costly,” Keesmaat told us last week, when we asked for more details about her plan.

This doesn’t mean developers will necessarily build mid-rise (they can always try to ask council for a amendment to build a high rise), but streamlining the bureaucratic process for mid-rise construction is one way of encouraging developers to build the more modest forms. Some avenues have already been “up-zoned,” and Keesmaat would like to see the process streamlined further.

Bedford was Toronto’s chief planner in 2002, and helped write the Official Plan that formally committed the city to development along the avenues. “I totally support what Jen is aiming for,” he told us. “We have to accept the reality that Toronto is growing, and that’s a good thing.”

But wait. If the City’s Official Plan was adopted in 2002, why are we still talking about this in 2012? Why weren’t Toronto’s zoning by-laws synchronized with the Official Plan years ago?

Bedford, speaking with the candor that a former civil servant is allowed (but gets a current one in trouble), says there are a number of reasons why councillors aren’t eager to allow developers more zoning freedoms.

“Councillors love to have the ability to get public benefits out of Section 37 through the rezoning process,” says Bedford, and proactively up-zoning gives away that opportunity. “Also, councillors are key in the rezoning process. They’re kings and queens in that process. And I think they like that.”

Photo by {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lychee_aloe/7054518993/"}Lychee_Aloe{/a} from the {a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/torontoist"}Torontoist Flickr Pool{/a}.

Keesmaat stresses that if this new process is implemented, residents won’t be cut out of the consultation process entirely. Rather, instead of piecemeal consultations for each individual development—which is what happens now, and how we end up in so many battles about individual building proposals—City staff, councillors, and the community would engage in a consultation process for an entire avenue at once.

Avenue studies aren’t new to Toronto, but this larger-scale approach is something we’re still exploring. The City began conducting one for Eglinton Avenue in 2011: it’s designed to help plan and manage the changes along the forthcoming LRT route. An examination of 20 kilometres along that transit line, the scale of this study is unprecedented in Toronto. It’s this Eglinton study, and the wide-angle lens it brings to city planning, that Keesmaat wants to emulate in other parts of Toronto.

Keesmaat hopes that the corridor-wide Avenue Study process will defuse some of the local antagonism to developers. “I think it’s better for consultation to happen in the context of the study, because you get less parochial interests then with a specific application.”

Mid-rise developers are, predictably, excited about the possibility of a shorter, less onerous process. Shane Fenton, vice-president at Reserve Properties (developer of 109OZ, among other buildings), says the current process actually causes more disruption than a more permissive one would.

“Someone who wants to build six storeys has to go through the same process as someone who wants to build 30,” says Fenton. “A lot of developers look at that and think, ‘why is it worth my time and money’?” Fenton estimates that it takes anywhere from one to two years to get approval for a mid-rise project, and that’s assuming that there aren’t any major disruptions: Reserve’s development at 1960 Queen Street East had its first application filed in April of 2011, was unanimously approved by Toronto-East York Community Council in May of 2012, and will now go to the Ontario Municipal Board on February 5, 2013. (Queen Street East is now the subject of a Visioning Study, a less robust form of examination than an Avenue Study, in part because of the community reaction to Reserve’s and other development proposals.)

There are other obstacles to mid-rise development: there are a limited number of “soft sites,” as Bedford calls them—places that are particularly well-suited to this form of development. While he was still working for the City he and planning department staff estimated that there is room for 120,000 units along our avenues.

Fenton adds that mid-rise buildings, while less disruptive to neighbourhoods than monolithic towers, do come at a premium: units in these buildings are more expensive on a per-square-foot basis, mostly because smaller developers can’t capture the economies of scale that large towers can.

But with planners inside the City and out warning that the earliest, easiest sites for tower development have all been filled, the question may no longer be whether mid-rise is preferable to towers, but whether it’s preferable to nothing at all.

CORRECTION: 4:24 PM As pointed out by a reader, we originally conflated some terminology (regarding zoning variances and amendments) in this article, which we have since corrected.

As 2012 comes to a close, we’re all looking forward to the new year.

But forget about all that, for the time being. What about all of last year’s dangling threads?

Here are five 2012 mysteries that continue to keep us up at night, along with estimates of our chances of ever seeing them resolved.

Obviously, we’ve left a lot out. Rob Ford alone could fill an entire post. That said:

Rob Ford’s Secret

Looking back on 2012, it would be hard to pick out a single week where there wasn’t some sort of Ford-related scandal in headlines. Nobody could accuse Toronto’s local media of being soft on the mayor.

But for much of the year a rumour has circulated among City Hall watchers. The whisperers say that reporters know something about Ford that they’re not publishing—something so explosive that it can’t be revealed, either because its news value is questionable, or because there isn’t enough proof. (Or because of some combination of both of those things.)

Earlier this month, the mystery story surfaced in hazy outline form, bigfoot-like, when Canada.com’s Marc Weisblott wrote a blog post about it. In the post, Weisblott talks about how Wilf Dinnick—CEO of the now-maybe-defunct OpenFile.ca—alluded to the existence of the Ford bombshell during a media panel on CBC Radio’s Q. (To hear what was said, go to the December 7 episode on this page, hit “play,” then skip to the 49-minute mark.) Dinnick is well connected, and his wife works as a reporter for the Globe and Mail, so he’s definitely privy to newsroom chatter. If he thinks there’s something to the gossip, that’s an interesting data point.

Enough other credible people think something’s up that the rumours can’t be discounted.

The Question: Reporters aren’t paid to keep secrets. So, what gives?

The Prognosis: Rob Ford has very few friends in the press gallery, and so if any paper can publish something damaging about him without violating its code of ethics, it will. If there’s anything to these rumours, the truth will come out.

The OLG Casino

In March, the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation announced that it would build a new resort casino somewhere in the Greater Toronto Area. Ever since, Toronto has wondered just where, exactly, the thing is going to end up.

At first, there was some speculation that Ontario Place, recently closed down by the province for redevelopment, would make a good casino location. But then John Tory torpedoed that idea.

The Port Lands was another popular suggestion, for a little while. But the extensive decontamination and utility work needed there quickly put a damper on hopes of erecting a gambling palace in that part of town.

Downsview Park has been floated as a possibility. One elaborate proposal by Oxford Properties Group even envisioned a multi-use entertainment complex—with a casino at its centre, naturally—on Front Street, right next to the Rogers Centre. The OLG has even said that it might consider putting a casino in Markham.

The Question: Where does the OLG want to put this casino?

The Prognosis: The City has public casino consultations scheduled through the end of January. After those are done, council will probably vote on its preferred option. The OLG will presumably announce its intentions once the City has had its say. There’s a decent chance we’ll know more by the end of 2013.

Sam’s Sign

Ryerson University bought the former site of Sam the Record Man, at 347 and 349 Yonge Street, in 2008. As part of that deal, the university inked an agreement with the City to preserve Sam’s iconic neon spinning-record sign and incorporate it into a building somewhere nearby.

Ryerson has demolished Sam’s, and is now in the process of building a new Student Learning Centre in its place. And yet, despite the fact that the university was obligated, under its contract with the City, to pick a location for the sign by July 2011, it still hasn’t announced a plan.

The Question: Does Ryerson intend to honour its promise?

The Prognosis: Ryerson president Sheldon Levy has made it pretty clear that he doesn’t want the sign anywhere on his campus. The odds of a resolution in 2013 are slim, unless the City decides to put its foot down.

The Condo Market

For years, analysts’ predictions have been inconsistent. Some have said that Toronto’s condo market is totally reasonable, and that we can all expect prices to increase or remain stable for the foreseeable future. Others have said that Toronto’s condos are overpriced, and that oversupply is bound to cause values to decline, or maybe even crash.

This year, we heard a lot more of the latter than the former. Sales of condos have been slowing significantly. Expert opinion—at least as reported by the local media—is pretty much unanimous: unit prices are going down, and they’ll probably keep going down, at least for a little while.

Nobody’s sure exactly how much worse things will get. Some analysts think the market is headed for a relatively painless slowdown. Others have said we’re in for a crash. Still others have seen dark portents in the travails of Toronto’s Trump International Hotel and Tower, which is fast on its way to becoming an overdevelopment cautionary tale.

The Question: Has the condo market peaked? If so, how painful will the comedown be?

The Prognosis: Who knows? If there’s anyone out there with a sure sense of whether or when Toronto’s housing market is going to collapse, they’re wisely keeping that valuable knowledge to themselves.

The Gardiner

When news broke that City staff had deceived the public about the severity of the Gardiner Expressway’s problems, it wasn’t long before the finger pointing began.

Some blamed city councillors for not authorizing enough spending on needed repairs. City councillors blamed Mayor Rob Ford for supposedly shelving a Waterfront Toronto environmental assessment that would have investigated whether it would be wiser to tear down part of the Gardiner rather than fix it. (In fact, the assessment was shelved before Ford took office.) Ford’s allies blamed City staff for supposedly not spending money that was allocated for repairs.

Regardless, the elevated section of the highway has as little as six years of useful life left, according to documents obtained by the press. Now, the City faces an estimated $500-million repair bill. Clearly, someone should have raised the alarm long ago. But who?

The Question: Whose job was it to bring the severity of the Gardiner’s problems to the public’s attention, and why didn’t they?

The Prognosis: Nobody’s going to take the blame for this screw-up voluntarily. In any case, the confused nature of the response makes it seem like more of an organizational failure than an individual one. The odds are fifty-fifty that a head or two will roll in 2013. In fact, a couple may have rolled—albeit quietly—already.

A few weeks ago, there was an announcement that saddened many Torontonians: the Mr. Christie bakery, near Lake Shore Boulevard, would be closing. It’s the end of a longtime landmark, and also of 550 jobs. Etobicoke councillors are concerned that factory owner Mondelez Canada wants to have the land rezoned for residential development—cue the condo alarm bells—and that this will lead to the loss of further employment lands in the area, and in particular threaten the future of the Ontario Food Terminal.

Today, in an effort to reverse that trend, city council voted unanimously to ask the province to declare the Food Terminal and the land around it, including the Mr. Christie site, “a provincially significant employment area”—which would have more effect than the municipal government’s designation, because it would preclude appeals to the OMB.

Local councillor and Planning and Growth Management chair Peter Milczyn (Ward 5, Etobicoke-Lakeshore) has been championing this cause. In an interview with us last week he explained why he thinks this is a matter of not just municipal but provincial concern: it’s not so much the Mr. Christie plant itself, though that’s garnered most of the headlines, but that bakery’s ability to serve as a buffer between the condos that have already been allowed in the area and the Food Terminal. And the Food Terminal, he contends, is essential. It’s the largest produce distribution in the country and the third largest in North America. For decades Toronto has been a major food processing centre, and Milczyn’s worry is that if condos start encroaching on the Food Terminal the province, which owns the site, will be tempted to move it outside of Toronto—and this, he says, could have a cascading effect on other local businesses, ranging from those processors to the many small shop grocers who make the journey to the Terminal several times a week to stock up.

He is also concerned about the future of development in Etobicoke. “We’re reaching a point where the infrastructure to support increased residential is not there,” he says, “in terms of traffic capacity, in terms of public transit, schools, libraries, other facilities.”

Nobody really expects today’s vote to save the Mr. Christie plant: even if the provincial government grants the City’s request, Mondelez is likely to shut it. (They could then sell the land to someone else who wanted to operate a factory, manufacturing site, etc., if they were denied the opportunity to build condos on it.) But the reason councillors from across the City spent time speaking on the matter today is that they share a concern about the shrinking availability of employment land in Toronto. And they hope that by maintaining the current zoning and planning designations, they might not only preserve the Food Terminal but find a way to spur some new economic activity in the area. Council, following a motion from Adam Vaughan (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina), is now going to consider striking up a working group to examine the prospects for “hosting educational and/or commercial food incubator programs and possible new food industry tenants” on the land.

There was a time when the strip of Lake Shore adjacent to the Humber Bay was the rough and tumble, neon-lit Wild West of the Greater Toronto Area. Once the main western gateway to Toronto, the Lake Shore of the 1950s epitomized the sort of freewheeling optimism romanticized about the postwar era, its asphalt lined with bars, motels, and the ubiquitous flicker of billboards. Vacationing families swarming the waterfront were as common as Ford Thunderbirds slowly cruising the street, simultaneously Leave it to Beaver and American Graffiti. Etobicoke and Toronto were exploding, and for a decade or so, at any rate, this was one of many centres of activity.

But unfortunately for the Etobicoke strip, that boom of progress brought with it the urban development that would gradually spell its decline. With traffic diverted away from the Lake Shore after the Gardiner opened in 1966, a protracted period of decay set in. Twenty years later, a place where thriving community and nightlife once coexisted was a sliver of its former self, with little more than the low-rise, art deco motels of the bygone period remaining. And most of those motels remained open due to a growing demand for facilities with hourly rates.

One of these motels remained iconic: the Beach Motel, right across Lake Shore from the soon-to-be-defunct Christie factory. Though in serious disrepair, it stood as the surviving link to the strip’s past, perhaps the last recognizable feature of what was once a very distinct face.

But with the Beach Motel’s demolition this morning, that chapter of Toronto’s history came to its close.

Like the Christie factory itself, the fate of the Beach Motel is the fate of the entire area, changing at a rate proportional to that of neighbouring construction. As property values on the strip entered a nosedive post-1966, large developers bought up the land in an avaricious free-for-all. Though you couldn’t go 10 feet in the 1950s without being told to buy this here or to drink that there, by 2012, the most dollars on the strip were changing hands far away from where billboards once stood. Places like the Beach Motel—which had been in the Young family since 1934—simply languished in the shadows of what those dollars paid for.

Of course, while recognizing the sadness of losing such a longstanding part of the city’s history, officials and business representatives remain optimistic about the future of this area.

“It’s a sad day seeing something that was part of our memories come down,” said local councillor Mark Grimes (Ward 6, Etobicoke-Lakeshore). Heralding forthcoming developments as an opportunity for “revitalization,” however, both he and Empire Communities, the new folks on the block, point to high-density residential and retail construction, coupled with proposed parkland along the waterfront, as the shiny, polished, high-end salvation of the decrepit strip. Taking in the urban vista from the Humber Bay, just south of where the first girders of this salvation are soon to be erected, anyone can be a prophet in terms of what that future will look like. While some welcome it, others see it as part of the same continuum that brought the Beach Motel’s destruction—both the beginning of that process and the end—as well as the loss of too much Toronto heritage, and the template for the future “Vancouver-ization” of Toronto’s waterfront.

A view of "Intersection," by Felix Kalmenson.

“Intersection”
Xpace Cultural Centre (58 Ossington Avenue)
October 19–November 10
FREE

The sheer creepiness of Felix Kalmenson’s photo and sound–based installation piece, “Intersection,” is striking. Upon visiting, one is viscerally assaulted by its constricting, dungeon-like space in the dim bowels of Xpace Cultural Centre, a gallery on Ossington Avenue. A perilously low ceiling, exposed pipes, and a harsh concrete floor all add to the effect. The piece is intended as a critique of Toronto’s current condo boom.

“Intersection” seems a natural extension of its gloomy room: the installation consists of a narrow, walk-through maze of vinyl banner panels slung over steel frames. On each panel is printed an eerily lit, photographed image of stark condominium accoutrements: steep, concrete stairways flanked by metal railings; an institutional white-bricked wall; glass doors reflecting endless, monochromatic windows; grey facades; tightly drawn blinds. Accompanying the visuals is a track playing white, industrial noise—captured, the artist says, from Liberty Village.

“I wanted to create an alienating environment that’s really claustrophobic and uncomfortable,” explains Kalmenson, a former student of architecture and geography. “It relays the feelings I have, going through these spaces.”

While anti-condo tropes are an increasingly common part of the Torontonian vernacular, Kalmenson’s approach feels fresh. In playing on the senses and provoking a kind of instinctive dread, the installation puts viewers in a frame of mind conducive to contemplating a more intellectual kind of condo critique. “Intersection” evokes what Kalmenson calls an “increasing privatization of public life,” and “new geographies of exclusion.”

According to Kalmenson, the spread of condos and the attendant demolition of historic architecture threatens to erase our collective history and memory.

“When you demolish historical architecture…you are demolishing memory in that architecture. And a lot of that architecture reflects our history back to us in way that helps activate contemporary struggles,” he says. “It signals our industrial heritage, and with that, struggles we’ve had with things like labour rights…But [condos] represent this hyper-modern, late capitalist notion of us existing outside of, and beyond, history.”

“They are hyper-modern, ahistorical edifices.”

What Kalmenson finds most problematic about condos, though, is the way they draw sharp socio-economic borders within the city, segregating privileged communities from poorer ones.

“What ends up happening is these condo developments act as vertical gated communities,” he says, “where they demolish a whole block of the city and construct an inward-looking community that contains almost all the amenities necessary for life, and doesn’t necessitate meaningful interaction with surrounding communities.”

Public Works looks at public space, urban design, and city-building innovations from around the world, and considers what Toronto might learn from them.

Last week, architect Frank Gehry and theatre impresario David Mirvish announced a plan to build three massive 80-plus storey condo towers near King Street West and University Avenue. This is Frank Gehry, so we’re not talking glass econo-boxes: the preliminary models were appropriately offbeat, with each massive tower unique, and the podium beneath resembling a crumpled Metro tossed by a sloppy commuter.

Despite fanciful exteriors, Gehry structures aren’t full of tesseracts and staircases to nowhere. They’re actually pleasingly functional. The proposed Toronto towers would include not only condos, but an art museum, a new OCAD facility, green terracing, and features intended to integrate the buildings into the street and the city.

Nevertheless, the Gehry towers can be considered one of those class of structures intended not just to serve a purpose, but to draw attention, to start conversations, and to be tourist attractions in their own right. They would be, in part, spectacles.

Showpiece buildings, as a concept, have a long history. Consider the iconic Eiffel Tower, the railway bridge tipped skywards that was once considered a monstrous scar on the face of the City of Light. Or, more recently, the giant Ferris wheel that is the London Eye (you’ll recall a similar idea for the Toronto waterfront, hatched in a fit of originality by Councillor Doug Ford).

Or for that matter, the Pyramids of Egypt. There’s no reason the Pharaohs couldn’t have parked their mummies under a simple-yet-elegant headstone.

All of the above have long since returned their investment in hype and tourist cash.

But for the price of a single Gehry building, you could probably throw up half a dozen Lake Shore-style clone condos to further monotonize the Toronto skyline. And what if everyone hates the Gehry complex?

Is betting the farm on attention-grabbing architectural marvels a good idea?

We used to think so.

Toronto’s claim to fame was once the CN Tower. For 30 years, it was The World’s Tallest Free-Standing Structure, until a younger, taller competitor pushed it from the number-one spot. The Burj Khalifa in Dubai achieved full erection in 2010, leaving our Tower little more than a massive phallic anachronism, yin to the open-roofed yang of the Rogers Centre next door, their never-to-be-consummated yearning destined to be pondered by an ever-dwindling number of jaded, Burj-diverted travellers.

Dubai, of course, is the king of architectural bling. That’s its thing. It lacks oil wealth, and until the 21st century, it was principally known for its high-end airport mall, and for governance slightly less misogynistic and repressive than that in neighbouring Saudi Arabia.

Unsatisfied with being the place where Russian tourists bought their Rolexes on the way home from elsewhere, Dubai went deep on wondrous mega-projects designed to lure travellers out of the departure lounge.

Apart from the Burj Khalifa, there’s the Dynamic Tower, an 80-storey rotating skyscraper; the World Islands, a group of artificial islands roughly shaped like the world; and Dubailand, an ambitious complex of shopping and theme parks the size of a city. There have been a lot more huge projects there, besides. Too many to mention.

Alas, hubris, mismanagement, and the 2008 financial crisis have left Dubai, for all practical purposes, bankrupt. Most of the mega-projects have gone quiet. Not a shovel has been lifted for the Dynamic Tower, and the World Islands are uninhabited, a single show home occupying the global archipelago.

While this cautionary tale is worth noting, Toronto is not Dubai. Any undertakings of such scale will be, like the Gehry proposal, driven by the private sector, and funded with care by cautious silver-haired Canadian bankers. There will be no gravy trains taking us down the track to ruin.

So yes dammit, bring the towers and a dozen more. We Torontonians deserve our own icons, our gigantic steel and glass fetishes, monuments to our collective creativity and daring, and magnets for the awestruck yokels of less-favoured metropoli.

The days of timid deferential Canadianism are long gone. Let’s build the absurd, beautiful, interesting city we want to live in.

Once a week, Vandalist features some of the most interesting street art and graffiti from around Toronto. Find something great? Email vandalist@torontoist.com.

One hundred and seventy-five years after William Lyon Mackenzie assembled his rebels at Montgomery’s Tavern, another group of angry citizens seems ready to rise up against the government on the same site, or at least let a crown corporation know they are unhappy about the possible fallout from its sale—especially if that fallout proves to involve a high-rise condo, as at least one commercial realtor has predicted.

Monday night, a crowd cried things like, “No more condos!” and, “Our history is not for sale!” at a rally in front of Postal Station K, which is what stands on the Montgomery’s Tavern site today. The protest was organized by Eglinton-Lawrence MPP Mike Colle. As a modest crowd listened to speeches about the history of the site and its value to the community, a steady stream of passers-by lined up to sign a petition to save the building.

“There’s really not much going on right now,” noted Canada Post spokesperson John Caines in a phone interview yesterday. An RFP (request for proposals) was made in April for Postal Station K, along with Canada Post properties at 50 Charles Street East and 1780 Avenue Road. “We’re considering selling them, but only if the purchaser provides a suitable replacement property or properties in return. We’re not looking to leave the area but upgrade and modernize our network.”

Eglinton-Lawrence MPP Mike Colle (centre) leads rally in cry of "No More Condos!"

While the property is a national historic site, because of its role in the rebellion of 1837, Postal Station K is listed but not historically designated by the City of Toronto, affording it few protections under the law. Designed in art-deco style by Murray Brown, whose other works include the nearby Belsize Theatre (now the Regent) on Mount Pleasant Road and the Capitol Theatre in Port Hope, Postal Station K is one of the few buildings in the British Empire to bear the insignia of King Edward VIII. Built in 1936, it replaced a structure originally known as Oulcott’s Tavern, which had been used as a post office from 1912 onward. Besides sorting neighbourhood mail, the building has also, at times, provided space for businesses and a halfway house.

Colle first heard rumblings about a potential sale while on a Heritage Toronto walk through the neighbourhood several weeks ago. He decided to mobilize the community before any clashes with developers could occur. “It’s a great place to take a stand,” Colle noted in a phone interview, referring to the property’s symbolic value. During the fight against amalgamation in 1997, Colle participated in a march that stopped at the site. He believes Canada Post is “totally remote from the public” and he will do his “darndest to make sure they realize that the taxpayers of Toronto paid for that building and they can’t just sell it off willy-nilly without listening to us.” Beyond the building, Colle stressed the property’s role as a public gathering place, especially for wheelchair users who find its lack of barriers ideal for relaxing and meeting others.

Anti-high rise sentiments in the neighbourhood should not be discounted, especially when a high number of condos are underway or being proposed. Though community efforts failed to stop the Minto towers south of Eglinton Avenue, anger at former city councillor Anne Johnston’s role in brokering the deal that allowed the project to proceed led to her defeat in Ward 16 by Karen Stintz in 2004. Though Stintz was unable to attend the rally because she was on vacation, neighbouring councillor Josh Matlow (Ward 22, St. Paul’s) was on hand to lend his support.

If a condo doesn’t become part of the site’s future, what could the building be used for? Colle said that the Anne Johnston Health Centre, located across the street, had expressed interest in additional space for their programs. Eglinton Park Residents’ Association chair Tom Cohen imagined a commercial tavern paired with a museum celebrating the rebellion of 1837. Whatever happens, it’s likely that a creative solution that utilizes most or all of Postal Station K (which seems to be a condition of any sale) will be better received than a high-rise that does little to acknowledge the site’s history. Otherwise, any march down Yonge Street to mark the anniversary of Mackenzie’s rebellion this December might not be a mere re-enactment.

Photos by Jamie Bradburn/Torontoist.

—If you missed it over the long weekend, this was major real estate developer Brad Lamb, speaking to the CBC about the growing pressures on Toronto’s housing market. He calls it “Manhattanization” and explained: “In New York City, even if you’re an investment banker making $1 million a year, you still can’t afford to buy a house in Manhattan, so you’re buying a condo.” Here’s one thing that might help: moving beyond a dichotomy of single-family homes vs. condo towers. There are all manner of inventive, mid-scale buildings that have been devised over the years, and while Toronto bylaws make constructing them a bad investment in some cases and zoning regulations prohibit constructing them in others, it is in fact possible for us to revisit said bylaws. It would certainly be more productive than the blinkered versions of densification we tend to discuss most often.