Results tagged “leslieville”

Urban Planner is Torontoist's daily guide to what's on in Toronto, published every morning. If you have an event you'd like considered, email all of its details—as well as images, if you've got any—to events@torontoist.com.

On the one hand, Alexander Muir, a schoolteacher and Orangeman who wrote Canada's confederation song, "The Maple Leaf Forever," in 1867, is a pretty important person in our country's history, totally deserving of an extraordinarily lovely mural on Queen Street East, in Leslieville.

Well, we're pretty sure that members of the "No Big Box in Leslieville" advocacy group and the heroic East Toronto Community Coalition are gushing right now. Almost a year after their battle to prevent SmartCentres from developing a property—allegedly big box, allegedly Wal-Mart–anchored—on the former home of Toronto Film Studios started heating up, and long after an official decision was expected, the City issued a press release a little more than an hour ago (quickly picked up by the Post and Spacing) declaring that the Ontario Municipal Board has "upheld the City’s right to maintain the area South of Eastern Avenue as an Employment District without large format, stand alone retail outlets" and that the Board "found that the functioning of other economic activities within this district would have been undermined if the Smart Centres application had been approved."

In the current issue of Toronto Life, Philip Preville attempts to argue for a big-box store in Leslieville. It's no easy task, but Preville's argument is pretty sound, resting on convenience (it'd be close to where people live), location (what else is going to go in its place?), cost (cheap!), and—oh yes—the environment (less driving = less pollution). Preville also says about the smartest thing we've yet heard about the development, which is that "instead of trying to keep the downtown big box free, we’d be better off figuring out how to make large-format retail compatible with a mostly walkable, constantly improving, ever-greening city in which many people still shop in their cars." NOW's Susan G. Cole obviously takes issue with Preville's argument—as many surely will—but the best argument she can muster in reply is to say that Wal-Mart, the crown jewel of the project, are just a bunch of fascists who want us all to conform. Um, okay.

These photos, of a garden constructed atop a bus shelter on Greenwood Avenue between Gerrard and Dundas, were recently uploaded to one of the Facebook groups of the Toronto Public Space Committee's Guerrilla Gardeners.

The proposed big box development in Leslieville has been getting a lot of attention lately, and not because it's a welcome addition to the retail streetscape in the east end. The land, the soon-to-be-former home of Toronto Film Studios, is currently zoned for employment purposes, which means that it's supposed to be used to provide jobs that pay better than retail.

Last night a gaggle of H2O architects descended upon the quiet Leslieville intersection of Queen St. East and Jones in order to convert a barren streetcar shelter into a snow palace. Organized by the TPSC subcommittee "Art Attack," the event was designed to enhance the original reasons behind Toronto's boxed bus stops—being shelter—while replacing ad space with icy ingenuity.

On Friday night at 10:30, the Toronto Public Space Committee's Art Attack will "descend on the streets to re-imagine bus shelters as sensational structures of snow," converting the two ad-adorned boxes at Queen and Jones into something a little more whimsical.

Photo by David Topping.