From the Globe:
ESSAY: LESLIEVILLE VS. BIG RETAIL
Now on sale in aisle one: Class warfare
For urbanites, the mall represents everything they hate about the suburbs - low-paying jobs and the people who come with them
DON GILLMOR
Special to The Globe and Mail
May 3, 2008
The pending arrival of a large mall in Leslieville has drawn familiar battle lines between locals and Big Retail. The seven-hectare site that was formerly occupied by Toronto Film Studios will most likely house a $220-million development that has more than 700,000 square feet of retail, and parking for 1,900 cars.
The city has rejected the development on the grounds that the land was zoned as "employment," and retail, with its low-paying jobs, doesn't qualify. But a hearing before the Ontario Municipal Board that starts on May 21 and is scheduled to run for 12 weeks will decide the outcome.
Neighbourhood groups have resisted the development, citing the increase in traffic and air pollution, and what they feel is an unimaginative and unproductive use of the land.
The developer, the emphatically named Smart!Centres Inc. (the company's formal name), says that this isn't a big-box development and doesn't mimic the sprawling Power Centres, SmartCentres and Wal-Mart super centres that loom in the suburbs like the doomed heads of Easter Island. The model submitted to the OMB shows two- and three-storey red-brick façades with a generous pedestrian corridor, though it may be anchored by the devil itself, Wal-Mart. Titled the "Foundry District Lifestyle Centre," it is a stealth mall.
The financial argument in its favour is that it is a huge capital investment that will create 2,100 full- and part-time jobs and contribute at least $4-million annually in property taxes. And this at a time when the city is famously broke.
The debate has been framed in terms of community and money, but at the heart is the nature of malls themselves.
'TWO KINDS OF MALLS'
Malls are like nuclear warheads, each one created to counteract one that already exists, and if possible, destroy it, or render it obsolete. Their evolution is partly social and cultural, and is glimpsed in comedian Chris Rock's observation: "There's two kinds of malls. The one where the white people shop, and the one where they used to shop."
The mall where they used to shop may end up being Gerrard Square, several blocks north of the Leslieville project. For a number of years, I lived nearby, an area that was "in transition," as the real-estate agents say. It featured a mix of gentrifying young couples, a resident ethnic mélange of Asians, Blacks, Sikhs and Turks, as well as combustible porch-sitting hillbillies, the residue of the white working class that occupied the area for decades.
Ten years ago, Gerrard Square was anchored by Simpsons and Zellers and there were a few chains, but there were also independent stores, and an ever-changing market filled with carts selling off-brand vegetable dicers, perfumes that were a syllable away from greatness (Entity, Obsessed), jeans by, yes, Galvin Klein, discount ceramics, and stuffed animals trapped in balloons. A man occasionally sold meat out of a gym bag near the mall entrance. On the weirdness scale, only the Dufferin Mall could touch it. But it was a fair reflection of the neighbourhood.
As the area gentrified and the disused factories converted to lofts, Gerrard Square began to reflect that change. A Home Depot arrived, along with Staples and Winners, and the mall underwent an expensive renovation. The guy with the gym bag moved on.
But it is a fragile alliance between mall and neighbourhood. Stores continue to come and go. The siren bargains of Wal-Mart will lure some shoppers south certainly, and Gerrard Square could retreat to its eclectic Third Worldism, a casualty.
TRAGIC FLAW
Every retail concept is born with a tragic flaw that eventually kills it. At the time that Toronto's first mall - Eglinton Square - was built in 1953, there were still 500 Fuller Brush men working Ontario. Somewhere, an idea is already hatching to kill the unbuilt SmartCentres, kill its ersatz streetscape and two-for-one sales, its cute tops and discount jeans. What then?
In The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping, a collection of essays edited by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaus, the mall is a preoccupation. "Rather than shopping (as an activity) taking place in the city (as a place)," writes John McMorrough, "the city (as an idea) takes place within shopping (as a place)."
In a time of declining church attendance, suburban sprawl, perilous school drop-out rates, ethnic balkanization, and a diluted notion of citizenship (the last Ontario election drew 52.6 per cent of voters, a record low; 22 per cent of Canadians believe "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is Canada's constitutional slogan), shopping has become the most visible organizing principle of the suburbs; it has become a place. It is more binding than nationalism and more seductive than sex (45 per cent of South African women polled preferred shopping to sex, with only 26 per cent preferring the opposite).
Part of the opposition to the Leslieville development is that an inherently suburban idea, an idea that is decaying within a larger unsustainable idea - the suburbs themselves - is being imported to an urban site. The East Toronto Community Coalition views the mall not as a viable employment opportunity, but a perpetuation of the existing underclass. There is a fear that the film industry, with its higher-paying jobs, will eventually flee the area. There is something of a class division between those who want bargains, and possibly employment from the proposed mall, and those who want higher-paying and more creative businesses (the original zoning was for creative employment). Leslieville is a community that contains both wealth and poverty, and Wal-Mart, in whatever form, is associated as a force for the latter.
A study by University of Toronto researchers found that Toronto's core was becoming increasingly affluent and white, while the surrounding suburbs were getting poorer and more diverse. The middle-class, which made up the demographic majority at the time the first malls were built, is disappearing. In 1970, 66 per cent of Torontonians were defined as middle income. In 2000 the figure was less than half that - 32 per cent. In the same period, low and very low income went from 19 per cent to a disturbing 50 per cent. What this means for Toronto's suburban malls is an increasingly diverse clientele with fewer financial resources.
Urban malls don't have a brilliant success rate. The exception is the Eaton Centre, which claims to be the city's largest tourist attraction, with 50 million visitors annually. But the Leslieville SmartCentre isn't the Eaton Centre. Despite thoughtful concessions to the site, its soul is suburban, and its fate may be as well.
The ideal mall
What would the ideal urban mall look like? It would be located at a public transit hub, and the sprawl that comes from the vast parking space - one of the great attractions of the mall - could be alleviated by parking garages or putting some of it underground (the Leslieville project is on a brownfield site where the soil contamination doesn't allow for underground parking).
It would be sustainable. There would be a green roof that helps defray solar heat gain and consume rainwater. Inside would be a wall of living plants that acts as a bio-filter and helps reduce air-conditioning costs. Geo-thermal borehole technology could be used to deliver sustainable energy through a series of shafts that store heat during summer and dispense it during winter. The additional cost of the technology would likely be paid for in energy savings within a decade or so.
The mall would also be more diverse than current versions. Chain stores are inevitable, providing consumer recognition and comfort, and for the developer, a known financial quantity. But there is room for diversity. (A farmer's market would be a natural feature, especially in the suburbs, where malls sit on what was once farmland.)
In the centre, between the boulevards, occupying the space that is traditionally used for parking, there could be season-round recreational facilities: A hockey rink, soccer field, baseball diamond, a dog park, a venue for cultural activities.
Is this a naive reverie, a napkin sketch masking as an urban plan? Of course it is. In the optimistic computer-generated model used to sell the plan, there would be ethnic couples sitting at the sidewalk cafés, children playing soccer cheered on by their parents, and families strolling with shopping bags.
But will the children play soccer there? Will the parents come to watch them, or are they too busy working two minimum-wage jobs (possibly at the mall itself)? Who would control the green space at night? Would the Cineplex and restaurants keep a critical mass of people on the property in the evenings?
The Leslieville site plan is admirably progressive: The buildings will be LEED-certified, the businesses diverse (hopefully) and scaled to the neighbourhood. There is a grey-water system that recycles and distributes water onsite. But there is also an impact on air pollution and traffic congestion, and an inconvenience to the bicycle path along Lake Shore Boulevard. If they don't build, however, what will go there? In the short term, nothing.
The question is, what will this development look like in a decade, or in two decades? What if the film business atrophies, and neighbouring studio Cinespace attempts something similar (it expressed an interest in re-zoning but is currently prevented from doing so)? As Hollywood North goes south (and east and west), could this area eventually be re-zoned to become an unbroken line of malls and big-box developments that extend for blocks, 40 hectares of retail sprawl that mimics the massive contiguous malls of Scarborough or Mississauga?
Ambitious plans for diversity (a design studio, professional offices, independent retail) could dissolve under harsh economic conditions. In 2015 there could be a Wal-Mart anchoring some dollar stores and a No Frills store.
The mall was conceived 50 years ago as a way to bring order and convenience to the hopeful suburbs. The suburbs are no longer hopeful, and the mall, unfairly or otherwise, is in danger of becoming a symbol of encroaching Third Worldism. What people are protesting is not necessarily what it is, but what it represents. They fear the man selling meat from a gym bag.
***
Smart!Centres Inc.
WHAT Leslieville plans that the company has submitted to the Ontario Municipal Board, where the fight has ended up, show a red-brick, two- or three-storey, mixed-use development, with two sets of buildings divided by a pedestrian mall.
WHERE On the east side of Pape Avenue between Eastern Avenue and Lake Shore Boulevard.
THE COMPANY Opens a new shopping centre nationally every three to four weeks; 185 in
Canada.
TORONTO At least a dozen centres already open or in development and many more in the Greater Toronto Area.
Source:
http://www.smartcentres.com
Staff
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/serv...ry/TPEntertainment/Ontario/?pageRequested=all
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