[ShonTron]

Actually, a Downtown Relief subway line would serve Leslieville much better than keeping the Gardiner expressway. A station would likely be located around Queen and Carlaw/Pape. But that would be counter to the auto-centric big box development that DumbCentres wants to build.

The Beach(es) has done just fine despite the demolition of the eastern leg of the Gardiner back around 2000.

 

[carrefour]

The only part about big-box development I don't like is big-box. If they intergrated their development into the existing architectural and community fabric from the beginning, something that is not at all difficult, they would have had their dumbcentre up and people would be shopping.

Developers and especially WalMart need to learn when to stop shoving square pegs into round holes.

Speaking of Walmart - I recently saw an american documentary chronicaling the rise of this monster. In it, they talked about the fight in Guelph and one in Virginia. When they interviewed the woman who was the head of the committee against the Walmart development, she was so distraught, almost to the point of being sick. Walmart was planning on paving over the forest in front of their houses and setting up a 24hr supercentre.

The moral : never move into empty lots that are not government protected.

 

[GraphicMatt]

It's the parking

My first choice would be for this development to not happen at all, as I don't really believe SmartCentres has ever built anything that looked remotely good or that fit into a neighbourhood, but I'm pretty sure the OMB will ram it through.

With that in mind, it'd be a little bit more palatable if it wasn't for all those damned surface parking spaces. It's like they have no intention of ever attracting local traffic -- they want people driving in, like Leslieville is just another suburb.

 

[TrickyRicky]

"Developers and especially WalMart need to learn when to stop shoving square pegs into round holes."

I completely agree with you. However, I was down there the other night for a soccer game and I must say that the lakeshore environment is so desolate and non-urban it's more like a round hole for WalMart.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Wal-Mart would buy their goods made from the slave wages paid to the children working in the workers paradise called China, and then use precious fuel to ship it to their stores, where they sell it cheap to the unemployed auto-workers in Canada, who use their foreign made cars to get the stores.

 

[Admiral Beez]

To me this seems like a battle between those that own private property and a city government that wants to tell property owners what they can do with their property. Now, reasonable government limits on property use, such as height restrictions for buildings (seemingly rarely enforced) and zonings for specific commercial, industrial or residential purposes are within the usual powers of any city government.

However, we now have a city government trying to stop a private property owner of business-zoned land from building a business on his land, simply because those in power hate Wal-Mart and hate Torontonians chosen mode of transport, i.e. cars. The property owner understands that a Smart Centre is by far the most profitable use of his property since, local complainers notwithstanding, the moment the Wal-Mart opens the parking lots and shopping aisles will be packed with locals shopping. And why will Wal-Mart thrive in Leslieville? Because the local merchants have stopped offering the products the locals want. Sure if you want over priced boutique clothing, over priced coffees and cakes, etc. then you can find it in the area, but if you want an entry level stereo, shoes, boots, clothing or school supplies for your kids, there's no where locally to turn for reasonable goods and prices. I guarantee you, when that Wal-Mart is built, it will be packed with customers, because today, anyone who wants to buy such goods is already driving to the nearest Wal-Mart to get their things.

So, how about this. If the city doesn't like what this guy is going to do with his own property, why doesn't the city buy it from him? They could then turn around and sell it to someone who will build another film studio that panders and depends on Americans and sits empty for half the year or whenever we're on the losing side of the currency exchange or outbid by other cities for films?

And let's stop this whole Wal-Mart supports Chinese slave labour garbage. Almost everything we all buy is made in China, not because of Wal-Mart, but because the China are able to sell for the lowest cost. The west has simply outsourced the manufacturing of the goods we want to the lower cost market. Would you prefer instead to have Toronto's 1890s - 1950s factories, warehouses, slaughterhouses and tanneries back all along the waterfront making the products we want?

 

[insertrealname]

To your first point, the City restraining a property owner's right to develop land within zoning constraints: the City is doing precisely what its mandate requires, which is to ensure that commercial development within the city meets certain objectives relating to employment quality and sustainability, to environmental impact, and to social impact. And it has to balance both the short and long-term considerations on these objectives (e.g. trying to attract hundreds of sure-fire low-paid retail jobs versus fewer--and more uncertain--higher paying jobs, or ensuring land is available for business activity which otherwise would move to the surrounding suburbs versus letting it be quickly repurposed for a shopping mall). In other words, "profitable use" by the proprietor is only one point among many on which the City must base decisions.

To your second point, that "local merchants have stopped offering the products the locals want", I can only say that within a radius of 2KM of Queen/Pape, there are (among larger stores) Loblaws "No Frills", Carpet Mill, Beer Store, LCBO, A&P "Basic Foods", Shoppers DrugMart, Zellers, Winners, Home Depot, Loblaws "Super Centre", Canadian Tire, Price Chopper, and I'm probably forgetting some. And most of these are in the medium and low pricing segment of the market, with reasonably good car access/parking. What is missing are medium sized commercial premises along Queen E. where a supermarkets, etc., like IGA would certainly do good business, since not everyone has or uses a car in the neighbourhood to do shopping, and the streetcar service along Queen E. and Gerrard E. makes for efficient "Main St" style shopping.

Finally, the idea that the only alternatives for this land are a shopping mall or "film studio that panders and depends on Americans and sits empty for half the year" is really indicative of the quality and ambition of the strategic business thinking in this city! Quick buck artists, waiting for the inside edge on public money whenever possible...

As for characterizing criticism of Chinese factory labour practices as "garbage", maybe we should think about the full range of consequences of "the west [...] simply outsourced[ing] the manufacturing of the goods we want to the lower cost market", not just exclusively about its economic rationality, the reality is probably not all black or white. Tanneries have to go somewhere, nobody is suggesting rebuilding one south of Eastern, but we might think about where and how our leather is being made in China.

 

[W. K. Lis]

As for characterizing criticism of Chinese factory labour practices as "garbage", maybe we should think about the full range of consequences of "the west [...] simply outsourced[ing] the manufacturing of the goods we want to the lower cost market", not just exclusively about its economic rationality, the reality is probably not all black or white. Tanneries have to go somewhere, nobody is suggesting rebuilding one south of Eastern, but we might think about where and how our leather is being made in China.
Today 08:59 AM

At Lake Shore Blvd. W. and Park Lawn is a bakery (Mr. Christie). There was a time, when I would be going by that large building and smell the aroma of baked goods. Now, due to Canadian and Ontario pollution laws, that aroma is attempted to be captured and kept from escaping into the surrounding atmosphere. Same with the sewage treatment plant to the north (on the most part). It was either change or close, which is the state Lesliveville is in now.

There is a cost to those laws. To go around those laws, and to lower costs, businesses have relocated. Which is why there are all those vacant industrial lands in Leslieville.

I would like to see China and other "worker paradises" get the same pollution laws, the same labour laws, and the same social laws as we have here. Then, we can do trade with them.

 

[insertrealname]

There is a Weston bread factory in South Riverdale (on Eastern Ave) that regularly emits the wonderfully synthetic odour of WonderBread(TM) a couple of times each month, I suppose when they clean the production equipment, and it spreads over the entire neighbourhood like an olfactory advertisement for the product. For us organic bread eating, raving anti-capitalist elitists in Riverdale, it's a bit like facing a deliberate personal provocation by Galen Weston every month, mais à chacun son gout!

More and more people are gradually getting the point you make about conditions of international trade: it can't be just about price of goods.

 

[Admiral Beez]

hundreds of sure-fire low-paid retail jobs

What's wrong with sure-fire retail jobs? In Toronto our high school drop out rate is about 40%, meaning that there is a large pool of folks needing retail jobs. If we fill the downtown with professional jobs, what are the uneducated and poor supposed to do for work? This is becoming a real problem in the city, in that our poor live downtown in apartment complexes, but their service-level jobs are frequently located in the 'burbs.

 

[Glen]

At Lake Shore Blvd. W. and Park Lawn is a bakery (Mr. Christie). There was a time, when I would be going by that large building and smell the aroma of baked goods. Now, due to Canadian and Ontario pollution laws, that aroma is attempted to be captured and kept from escaping into the surrounding atmosphere. Same with the sewage treatment plant to the north (on the most part). It was either change or close, which is the state Lesliveville is in now.

There is a cost to those laws. To go around those laws, and to lower costs, businesses have relocated. Which is why there are all those vacant industrial lands in Leslieville.

I would like to see China and other "worker paradises" get the same pollution laws, the same labour laws, and the same social laws as we have here. Then, we can do trade with them.

Amen!

This is the biggest problem with trade as it now stands. You can now pollute and circumvent labour laws by proxy. Imports should be held to the same standards (all) as domestic producers. The excuse of allowing the developing world the same chance to 'pollute and exploit, as the west did, is a red herring. When the west did it it was done for domestic consumption. The east has largely done so to facilitate exports.

 

[insertrealname]

What's wrong with sure-fire retail jobs? In Toronto our high school drop out rate is about 40%, meaning that there is a large pool of folks needing retail jobs. If we fill the downtown with professional jobs, what are the uneducated and poor supposed to do for work? This is becoming a real problem in the city, in that our poor live downtown in apartment complexes, but their service-level jobs are frequently located in the 'burbs.

Fine, the shopping centre may provide jobs to the people in social housing in the neighbourhood--but an exit strategy from social housing?

Real apprenticeship type training and jobs in combination with efforts to deal with the school drop-out problem and persistent poverty would be more effective and a longer-term solution than just the retail jobs alone; there is a real demand for qualified service/construction/non-post-secondary-educated jobs in this city, and the training and apprenticeship programs are nowhere near fulfilling that demand.

Surely just depending on the jobs and economic opportunities the free market economy delivers is one sided, there has to be recognition of the role that explicit urban development, economic and social programs can play in the city. I don't want a Toronto economy with a skills/income profile that is dumbbell shaped, with a concentration of people at the ends the the range, but few in the middle, just as I don't want extreme segregation of residential, commercial and employment areas in the city, simply because nobody in authority thinks through the consequences of accepting everything a developer proposes. (Presumably their belief in the self-correcting nature of the market is so deep, that they are willing to bear any kind of consequences--such faith conquers all, as we know.)

The SmartCentres proposal is not an acceptable substitute for a real strategy for the urban and social future of Toronto, and of South Riverdale in particular.

 

[TrickyRicky]

I'm in theory against the smartcentres proposal but I think the counter argument lacks strength because of the lack of a credible alternative. What I mean is if the decision before the city was between group A and group B it would be easy to argue against smartcentres. People suggest alternatives but who but smartcentres is willing to put their skin in the game? Personally, I would support a city decision to keep the land vacant in order to support say industrial zoning if the proposal was for residential development but I think it oversteps the cities mandate to direct too closely the nature of employment or commercial activity on the site. Having the city government closely and personally involved with development projects beyond clear cut areas of regulatory jurisdiction is not healthy in my opinion.

 

[TOinTO]

What's wrong with sure-fire retail jobs? In Toronto our high school drop out rate is about 40%, meaning that there is a large pool of folks needing retail jobs. If we fill the downtown with professional jobs, what are the uneducated and poor supposed to do for work? This is becoming a real problem in the city, in that our poor live downtown in apartment complexes, but their service-level jobs are frequently located in the 'burbs.

Quite a claim. The number of low end service jobs downtown is declining, while the number of high paying service jobs is increasing. Do you have any evidence to back it up? Is there less retail downtown than there used to be?

The 'jobs for the poor' argument is just a put-on by the SmartCentres PR department. It holds no water. It's sad how many people are thoughtless enough to buy it.

There is no evidence that there will be a net increase in retail jobs as a result of this development. There is no evidence that there will be a net increase in retail activity in the east end of Toronto, and certainly not the city, as a result of this.

For example, would anyone be surprised if Home Depot moved out of Gerrard SQ and into this new development? I would be surprise if they didn't.

No society ever made itself richer selling itself foreign made goods. You need to create wealth. Retail is not a net creator of wealth for this country. The film industry is.

However, we now have a city government trying to stop a private property owner of business-zoned land from building a business on his land, simply because those in power hate Wal-Mart and hate Torontonians chosen mode of transport, i.e. cars.

Ah yes, the crazed car haters argument: the rational thing is just to further tailor our city to cars because that's how people want to travel. Self confirming, because the car increasingly becomes the only effective way to get around.

So we'll build a car dependent mall where you will feel out of place and unsafe walking around. No one will walk to it and the parking lot will be full and the wise will point to it as proof that people love their cars. Except those crazy NIMBY enviro-fanatics.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Retail is not a net creator of wealth for this country. The film industry is.

All hail the film industry!