Azad, Vice-chairman of the local Business Improvement Area, said Westbank made clear he can return once the redevelopment is complete. But he believes the street will never be the same.
“I think this is one of the last little corners of Toronto with soul and it’s being removed, basically,” said Azad, 62, who owns another restaurant on Roncesvalles Ave. “We’ll become just like any other big city, with lots of hustle and bustle, but no charm. You cannot create charm, it creates itself.” https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2017/01/21/i-hoped-to-die-on-markham-st.html .
It is ironic that while THE CITY OF TORONTO honored Jane Jacobs last year in ways that mattered not to her it also dishonored her by attacking and by allowing to be destroyed things that did matter to her.
In an interview with the CBC in 1969 Markham Street Village (now Mirvish Village) was singled out by Mrs. Jacobs as an example of what Toronto was doing right. You can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9833TPWSCY .
This year Mirvish Village is going to be a part of the history of Toronto.
We must not forget that the vast majority of people prefer silence to speaking out.
Many of those who do speak out make a pretense of so doing.
Not Jane.
People have told and continue to tell me that if only I would shut up they would support me.
This is why Albert Einstein said silence is complicity. When he spoke up in he realized how few do.
There are a lot of people around the world making a pretense of honoring Jane Jacobs.
Damn few, too few, are truly honoring her.
Yesterday while walking along College Street I spotted a welcome site. THE BEGUILING, recognized as one of the best comic art shops in the world, is now close to me on College Street http://www.beguilingbooksandart.com/about/ .
It used to be in Mirvish Village.
Mirvish Village has a special place in my heart. The late “Captain” George Henderson was invited by Honest Ed to move his store VIKING BOOKS from Queen Street just west of University to Markham Street https://www.facebook.com/torontoist/posts/10153445255880971 , http://lost-toronto.blogspot.ca/2011/01/captain-georges-memory-lane-on-markham.html .
My film screenings began at Captain George’s Queen Street store. They moved with him to Markham Street. He re-named his store MEMORY LANE.
I ran the store for George for a while when he was unable to.
I learned a lot from George.
Liora Freedman is the planner for the Bathurst area of Toronto. She is a planner in the Robert Moses mold which means she is the worst possible person to be in her position http://ontarioplanners.ca/Special-Pages/Conference-2015/Speakers/Liora-Freedman , http://www1.toronto.ca/wps/portal/contentonly?vgnextoid=72e30621f3161410VgnVCM10000071d60f89RCRD .
She is also responsible for Kensington Market.
When I contacted her office she told me not to do so.
Honest Ed gave Toronto something unique.
In the chapter titled “The Need for Old Buildings” Jane Jacobs argues that, apart from any architectural considerations, every neighborhood needs a mixture of newer and older buildings in order to allow for a variety of uses, income levels, and even ideas within the neighborhood. This section makes me think especially of the simple little downtown Fondren buildings that house some of our most practical neighborhood businesses. It also reminds us that the original “affordable housing” actually consisted of the constant recycling of used buildings, often of high-value when first built but of lower value when abandoned by their original owners. While they may be “used” they are generally of higher-quality construction than those buildings constructed specifically as “affordable housing.”
Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them. By old buildings I mean not museum-piece old buildings, not old buildings in an excellent and expensive state of rehabilitation–although these make fine ingredients–but also a good lot of plain, ordinary, low-value old buildings, including some rundown old buildings.
If a city area has only new buildings, the enterprises that can exist there are automatically limited to those that can support the high costs of new construction. These high costs of occupying new buildings may be levied in the form of an owner’s interest and amortization payments on the capital costs of the construction. However the costs are paid off, they have to be paid off. And for this reason, enterprises that support the cost of new construction must be capable of paying a relatively high overhead–high in comparison to that necessarily required by old buildings. To support such high overheads, the enterprises must be either (a) high profit or (b) well subsidized.
If you look about, you will see that only operations that are well established, high-turnover, standardized or heavily subsidized can afford, commonly, to carry the costs of new construction. Chain stores, chain restaurants and banks go into new construction. But neighborhood bars, foreign restaurants and pawn shops go into older buildings. . . . Well-subsidized opera and art museums often go into new buildings. But the unformalized feeders of the arts–studios, galleries, stores for musical instruments and art supplies, backrooms where the low earning power of a seat and a table can absorb uneconomic discussions–these go into old buildings. Perhaps more significant, hundreds of ordinary enterprises, necessary to the safety and public life of streets and neighborhoods, and appreciated for their convenience and personal quality, can make out successfully in old buildings, but are inexorably slain by the high overhead of new construction.
As for really new ideas of any kind–no matter how ultimately profitable or otherwise successful some of them might prove to be–there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old, low value, rundown buildings.
There doesn’t seem to be much creativity at the top. It seems to me that Toronto has a split personality, a civic schizophrenia. On one level there is the spirit of individuals and small groups who do things…what you might call the vernacular spirit. This is all very informal, ingenious, quite romantic and full of fun, a great deal of fun. It seems to me that the official spirit of Toronto is stamp out fun. It’s pompous, impressed with mediocrity if its very, very big and expensive,”–Jane Jacobs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUO20–hXw8 .
Toronto at the top was pompous, impressed with mediocrity if it’s very, very big and expensive in 1969 when Jane spoke those words. It is the same in 2017 when I speak these words.
I have some advice for those of you who belong to that vernacular spirit. Save yourself a lot of grief. Leave Toronto. This is is a city that does not value us. Ed Mirvish gave Toronto a street of old buildings with low rent. He created an environment where artists and individuals could flourish.
There is no room for us in today’s Toronto.
–Reg Hartt 01/24/2017.
Liora Freedman is the planner for my part of Toronto. When I got in touch with her office I got this reply.