Taken 12 November.

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This is a massive loss for the arts community in Toronto. I have many friends who have used this space. People were friendly, the work they were making was wonderful, and overall I felt like it elevated the Toronto community. I hope there is a plan to support the loss of studio spaces like this.
 
abovegrade said:
This is a massive loss for the arts community in Toronto. I have many friends who have used this space. People were friendly, the work they were making was wonderful, and overall I felt like it elevated the Toronto community. I hope there is a plan to support the loss of studio spaces like this.
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It's too bad Artscape isn't involved (and that they became insolvent). Otherwise, the existence of spaces like 888 Dupont is essentially left up to chance. An artist building like this one could happen again, but it's the luck of the draw.

You need an owner who has enough money to buy a spacious but dilapidated building but no money for renovations, who also happens to be willing to rent to people without "good paying respectable jobs" by conservative landlord standards and also to turn a blind eye to them living in the space (which raises possible safety and legal issues for the landlord).

Some buy dilapidated buildings without money for renovations but have no interest in renting to artists. Old Toronto's supply of dilapidated old industrial buildings is down to almost nothing at this point. The suburban areas will likely have some candidates for the future 888 Dupont, but that's contingent on artists without cars actually wanting to go to those areas and someone making a building like this happen again.
 
junctionist said:
It's too bad Artscape isn't involved (and that they became insolvent). Otherwise, the existence of spaces like 888 Dupont is essentially left up to chance. An artist building like this one could happen again, but it's the luck of the draw.

You need an owner who has enough money to buy a spacious but dilapidated building but no money for renovations, who also happens to be willing to rent to people without "good paying respectable jobs" by conservative landlord standards and also to turn a blind eye to them living in the space (which raises possible safety and legal issues for the landlord).

Some buy dilapidated buildings without money for renovations but have no interest in renting to artists. Old Toronto's supply of dilapidated old industrial buildings is down to almost nothing at this point. The suburban areas will likely have some candidates for the future 888 Dupont, but that's contingent on artists without cars actually wanting to go to those areas and someone making a building like this happen again.
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There's been some talks about Downsview becoming a hub for this, through investment into these kinds of spaces and especially with the soon to be abandoned hangars. But thanks for the reply, I agree there is limited supply.
 
There's lots of space like this around the City, but as @junctionist rightly points out above, you need an owner / landlord willing to assume a lot of liability, as well as that individual's financial ability to run the building at a loss for it to make sense. In an expensive and rapidly growing city, unfortunately it's too-often the artists and those 'generators of culture' who are first driven out.
 
As someone who spent a fair bit of time in this building, I think its demise was inevitable. It wasn't safe, it was horrible to be in during the summer/winter, going to the washroom was a trip, it was filled with vermin, etc.

Does Toronto need more affordable places to live? Yes. Does Toronto need to more consciously support the arts? Yes. Was this particular building sort of a nightmare and probably should have been torn down years ago? Yes.
 
Parkdalian said:
As someone who spent a fair bit of time in this building, I think its demise was inevitable. It wasn't safe, it was horrible to be in during the summer/winter, going to the washroom was a trip, it was filled with vermin, etc.

Does Toronto need more affordable places to live? Yes. Does Toronto need to more consciously support the arts? Yes. Was this particular building sort of a nightmare and probably should have been torn down years ago? Yes.
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But why countenance that when we can blithely romanticize a nebulous, bohemian, 'artist life' and sorrowfully despond that everything in the future is going downhill? I never set foot in 888, but I did spend a fair amount of time in the old Coffin Factory down on Niagara which was a similar sort of space. While it was extremely cool, very cheap, and attracted a whole bunch of like-minded individuals, akin to my reading of your post on this building, its future was absolutely unsustainable.
 
ProjectEnd said:
But why countenance that when we can blithely romanticize a nebulous, bohemian, 'artist life' and sorrowfully despond that everything in the future is going downhill?
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Because a certain industry lobbies for too much housing demand which prices out everyone loll
 
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