Just when we thought that big box retail was going to suck the life out of the small-scale businesses in Toronto, the opposite seems to be happening. A new generation is transforming Toronto’s main streets, remaking the City one shopfront at a time.

What Toronto lacks in grand unifying planning gestures it makes up for in its grassroots retail movement. In fact, much of the public face of the City was built with the energy and spirit of hundreds of mom and pop businesses. These working urban vitrines are often cobbled-together additions to old houses and are not structures of beauty, like most of the urban fabric of Toronto, but they are the glue that holds it all together. They are a continuously transforming public face and now more than ever there seems to be a renaissance of activity.

There are lots and lots of shopfronts in Toronto still available for modest rents. This proliferation and affordability has given rise to a culture for the young and enterprising to have their chance to effect change throughout Toronto. The importance of a brave new small business pioneering in a downtrodden neighbourhood should not be overlooked. A simple breakfast spot like Saving Grace on Dundas Street West can shift the demeanor of a street and cause a ripple of new community life.

Small box retail is so commonplace in Toronto that we take its importance for granted. Travel to other, surely more glamourous cities and witness firsthand the deadening effect that perfectly branded retail is having on the character of places.

1. I would actually say Toronto is less friendly to small retail than many other cities. There are many, many major streets in downtown where new townhouse developments are going up, cutting off retail opportunities for those streets forever. In NYC, the urban core streets are required to have retail on the ground floor, but here apparently the allure of your own house, even if it fronts a major street with constant car and streetcar traffic, is more rewarding for developers. Building pure housing on streets which could easily have retail is going to choke a lot of development for a long time to come.

   Posted by  on  10/15  at  01:51 PM
3. I completely agree with the first comment that many recent developments have been insensitive to the continuity of commercial streets. I deplore townhouse developments which bring a suburban mentality to what should be thriving downtown streets. This is a huge problem. We don’t recognize and preserve systems which work well in our City; we take them for granted. Unfortunately, I share your worries about developers not supporting sound urban initiatives. My hope in writing about small-scale retail in Toronto was to draw attention to its importance.
   
   Posted by  on  {comment_date format=’%m/%d’}  at  {comment_date format=’%h:%i %A’}
Posted by  on  10/15  at  06:44 PM

4. I disagree with the two comments above. In terms of tall buildings, they frequently have retail along busy streets that need retail, I am thinking in particular of recently completed buildings like 18 Yorkville, Bay Club, Skyline Cosmopolitan, 85 Bloor, King’s Court (all completed this year). The CityPlace buildings have retail all along Front, where none was before.

   I think the issue with condo-retail is not that it is there, but that there are restrictions on the type of retail allowed that tend to make these stretches predictable and bland. But that’s not the same as not allowing for retail.

   Some buildings, like the Radio City buildings, do have residential strips on downtown streets, but would anybody seriously call for retail on Mutual Street?

   As for townhomes, I follow those less closely, but my feeling from cycling around extensively is that they tend to appear on lesser streets where continuous strip retail would not necessarily be successful. Retail is not necessary at the street level on every development downtown.

   It’s not that it can’t be improved, but since the first person who made a comment above has opened the question, what city is Toronto being compared with? In Montreal and Vancouver, I could name countless developments in the centre cities with no retail at base. That doesn’t mean that we can’t learn from some of the successes in both those cities and improve what we do, but I’m not sure the discussion is helped from blanket statements or condemnations.

   Posted by  on  10/17  at  11:07 AM

5. I think it’s important to recognize that there is a hierarchy of street types in Toronto with a variety of uses and mixed uses. I definitely don’t think that we should have retail at grade on every street. In fact, I’m sure that even in areas of NYC this wouldn’t be appropriate. I think the point being made in comment 2 is that it is unfortunate that streets with continuous retail along the street are interrupted by buildings having solely residential use.

   Posted by  on  10/19  at  04:32 PM

<< Back to main