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Newsstand: August 4, 2010
Illustration by Matt Daley/Torontoist.
It’s Wednesday again and Ontarians are drinking like fish, Leslievillians can’t catch a break, and condo sales may finally be taking a breather.
The dog days of summer are bringing out our inner booze hounds. The LCBO reports that sales of beer and cider are up about 11.5% over last year, with liquor sales showing a sizable increase as well. As a result, the LCBO’s Durham distribution centre has been operating seven days a week for the past couple of months to ensure that intoxicants get out to the public before the DTs set in. Scientists who specialize in drunkenness attribute the rise in sales to the warm, sunny summer and the proliferation of patios.
Leslieville residents who successfully fought against a proposed big-box mall on Eastern Avenue may end up with auto dealerships instead. Developer Smart Centres, whose bid to big-box the former Toronto Film Studios site was rejected last year by the OMB, now wants to build a small auto mall along with a couple of retail outlets and 332 parking spaces. So far no one has offered to set up another film studio or fill the site with quaint mom and pop coffee shops, independent booksellers, and antique stores run by quirky octogenarians.
The Star reports that difficulties at the US-Canadian border may have contributed to a decline in Caribana attendance numbers this year. Organizers point to the requirement for US citizens travelling to Canada to have a passport (actually implemented in June 2009), as well as a higher Canadian dollar as possible factors in reducing the number of Caribana visitors from the US. That said, at this point there’s no hard data on how many people actually showed up or how many of them were from the States, so it may be a little early to start making excuses.
In other non-news, a lot of people thought John Tory was going to make an announcement about his potential mayoral run yesterday. But he didn’t.
If you’re in the market for nine hundred square feet of heaven in the sky, now might be the time to buy. The number of new condos sold in Toronto as of the end of June has dropped for the first time since 1994. Quarter-over-quarter sales declined by about 8% in the second quarter of 2010, falling from record high numbers at the beginning of the year. Resale condos continued to do well, posting an 18% increase in the same time period. Experts expect that a glut of new units on the market will lead to flat or slightly decreasing prices over the remainder of the year.
Liberals are annoyed that the Federal Tories have ceased giving detailed reports on the progress of ongoing stimulus spending. As part of the deal worked out to avoid the Liberals and NDP forming an unholy alliance last year, the Conservatives agreed to release regular reports on how stimulus money was being spent and the effectiveness of the program. However, with five comprehensive reports published since January 2009, the government has not issued one since March, although they’ve now indicated that another is planned for the fall. Liberal finance critic John McCallum wants to revisit the issue when Parliament resumes, while Tories have suggested an alternate reporting method where the state of the stimulus program is regularly graded on a sliding scale ranging from “Quite good, we believe” to “Most probably excellent.”