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From the Globe:
Bloor Street shopping strip loses its parking
Wider sidewalks part of new look
JEFF GRAY
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
June 11, 2008 at 5:20 AM EDT
Toronto's posh shopping strip on Bloor Street West is getting a $20-million makeover funded by local businesses that will mean ending all on-street parking, narrowing the road, lining it with trees and installing wider, black-granite sidewalks.
However, the new-look "mink mile" will still include a special lay-by - a cut into the sidewalk for cars - right in front of high-end retailer Holt Renfrew. Meant for deliveries and picking up and dropping off customers, the idea was questioned by left-leaning city councillors yesterday, who wondered why the outlet needed special treatment.
But Peter Clewes, the architect who led the street's redesign, defended the plan. "It's a political world, it's a complicated world. They are a major, major benefactor into this project. It's one of the compromises that you make in the creation of any project, and I think it's a reasonable element," Mr. Clewes told a city hall committee yesterday
The long-delayed project to transform Bloor from Avenue Road to just past Church Street will see the city borrow the money up front, to be paid off gradually by the businesses along the ritzy strip. Construction is to begin this summer and be completed in 2009.
Cycling activists also targeted the project yesterday for failing to include bike lanes, even though the city is studying how to accommodate bikes across Bloor.
Kyle Rae, the local city councillor, said the project was about turning the street from a thoroughfare into a destination with wide sidewalks for pedestrians: "It has been seen as a traffic corridor for most of its life, and what we are doing now is turning it into a place."
Daniel Egan, the city's manager of cycling and pedestrian infrastructure, said the narrower road and lack of parked cars would make the new Bloor better for cyclists, although activists disputed this.
Mr. Egan said traffic volumes - 30,000 cars a day - meant that the new narrower Bloor still needed four lanes and could not accommodate full-size bike lanes. However, he said the street could be retrofitted with bike lanes later.
The city usually faces a revolt from merchants when the subject of reducing on-street parking comes up. In this case, the local businesses association has agreed, but not all the retailers love the idea, said Briar de Lange, general manager of the Bloor-Yorkville Business Improvement Area. Ms. de Lange said the Holt Renfrew lay-by - which anyone will be free to use - is needed because that block lacks side streets for drivers to drop off shoppers.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080611.wbloor11/BNStory/National/
AoD
Bloor Street shopping strip loses its parking
Wider sidewalks part of new look
JEFF GRAY
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
June 11, 2008 at 5:20 AM EDT
Toronto's posh shopping strip on Bloor Street West is getting a $20-million makeover funded by local businesses that will mean ending all on-street parking, narrowing the road, lining it with trees and installing wider, black-granite sidewalks.
However, the new-look "mink mile" will still include a special lay-by - a cut into the sidewalk for cars - right in front of high-end retailer Holt Renfrew. Meant for deliveries and picking up and dropping off customers, the idea was questioned by left-leaning city councillors yesterday, who wondered why the outlet needed special treatment.
But Peter Clewes, the architect who led the street's redesign, defended the plan. "It's a political world, it's a complicated world. They are a major, major benefactor into this project. It's one of the compromises that you make in the creation of any project, and I think it's a reasonable element," Mr. Clewes told a city hall committee yesterday
The long-delayed project to transform Bloor from Avenue Road to just past Church Street will see the city borrow the money up front, to be paid off gradually by the businesses along the ritzy strip. Construction is to begin this summer and be completed in 2009.
Cycling activists also targeted the project yesterday for failing to include bike lanes, even though the city is studying how to accommodate bikes across Bloor.
Kyle Rae, the local city councillor, said the project was about turning the street from a thoroughfare into a destination with wide sidewalks for pedestrians: "It has been seen as a traffic corridor for most of its life, and what we are doing now is turning it into a place."
Daniel Egan, the city's manager of cycling and pedestrian infrastructure, said the narrower road and lack of parked cars would make the new Bloor better for cyclists, although activists disputed this.
Mr. Egan said traffic volumes - 30,000 cars a day - meant that the new narrower Bloor still needed four lanes and could not accommodate full-size bike lanes. However, he said the street could be retrofitted with bike lanes later.
The city usually faces a revolt from merchants when the subject of reducing on-street parking comes up. In this case, the local businesses association has agreed, but not all the retailers love the idea, said Briar de Lange, general manager of the Bloor-Yorkville Business Improvement Area. Ms. de Lange said the Holt Renfrew lay-by - which anyone will be free to use - is needed because that block lacks side streets for drivers to drop off shoppers.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080611.wbloor11/BNStory/National/
AoD