City
Is Dundas West construction the next Roncesvalles?
Roncesvalles has seen its share of construction sadness, but it seems it is not alone. Indeed, Roncesvalles now has an empathetic friend to share in its perpetually dug-up despair: Dundas West.
Dundas West between Howard Park Avenue to Bathurst is facing another round of construction this summer. This time, it's sidewalk beautification. But last year, it was water main repair. And before that, it was streetcar track replacement.
Needless to say, business owners are less than pleased about the noise, dust, and wooden planks serving as bridges to their front entrances. And I was less than pleased about my abbreviated streetcar ride, which only took me as far as Spadina Avenue, and subsequent shuttle bus crawl that inched painfully toward my desired destination.
This latest round of construction, which will see new sidewalks, trees, and benches, is expected to be completed by October 2011. Of course, for some business owners on Dundas West, the damage is already done.
I stopped into She Takes the Cake at Dundas and Lansdowne to see what owner Adrienne Weinberg, who closed the storefront retail section of her bakery a couple years ago, had to say about the construction.
"The business on this street are being strangled," she tells me. "I almost lost my livelihood when Adam Giambrone took away parking on this street."
That was in 2008. Then-councillor Giambrone saw the removal of 70 metered parking spaces on Dundas West, which resulted in a sharp decline in business revenue according to storefront owners in the area.
"How was I supposed to do deliveries?" Adrienne continues. "If someone's picking up a four-tier cake, are they really going to carry it around the corner and down the street to their car?"
Dundas West got its parking back in January, but now due to construction, there's no stopping anywhere along the strip.
"I've been really put off by everything that has happened," Adrienne says. "I'd be really reticent to go back to a storefront."
Then there are others on the street who worry that customers won't come back, even after the construction is over. The manager of Brighten Up Your Corner Flowers & Gifts tells me she's been on the street for 10 years, and seen construction for the better half of the last four. I spoke with her after entering through the shop's back door, since there was no way to get to the front entrance.
"People have just been going somewhere else," she says. "For a week now, you haven't been able to get to the entrance. Anyway, people become loyal to their flower shops. Once they find someplace new, they stick with it."
While existing businesses are noticing a decline in foot traffic and customers on the street, new ones may experience some delays in getting off the ground. I go to visit the recently opened Woodlawn at Dundas and Dufferin, but find owner Ainaz Maleko outside the shop and we can't hear each other until we move inside.
"I'd love to keep the door open," she says, hoping to give the store a friendlier vibe, "but it's just so loud, and I don't want all the dust to come in." Of course, to me it seems there are fewer people strolling along the blue-gated sidewalks anyway, so who knows what sort of difference an open door would make.
Indeed, it looks like Dundas West still has a few rough months ahead, which comes after a few difficult, construction-filled, parking-less years. Looks like Roncy isn't alone after all.
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Sorry Charlie, I feel for you all, I do. But call me in 3 years.
Very little planning on this part!
EXAMPLE:
Who want's to go to a store where you need to detour round the construction, walk the plank, jump the mud, and put up with no parking on the road?
Not me!
This seems fishy, what could the space for 70 spots be used for instead? Or is this a mangling of the City proposal to ban rush-hour parking on Dundas to improve car commuter throughput? The BIA waged a war on the car with an "our streets are not highways" campaign and Giambrone backed down. Or is this something different?
In this construction related grumbling I haven't seen any suggestion of what the city should have done differently. The streetcar tracks and water main had to get dug up sometime! And the new sidewalks will look super classy.
If the city did the project all at once, a) the street would be a smoking crater without sidewalks, streetcars, or pavement, and b) any problem with any of the projects would delay all the work crews and cost the city millions.
I live on Dundas and my impression is the construction has been done quickly and competently.
Insanity.
My friend owns a small jewellery store in the area and the on going construction as plagued her and other local business for years. First the streetcar tracks. removal of street parking, (only to be reinstated) Water-main, "upgrades" now the side walk. Who approved this. You would hope the people who run our city have more common sense.
"Hey, TTC wants to replacing tracks maybe we can also replace the water-mains at the same time. Since the side walks are getting ripped up lets also replace the side walk as well."
Sorry is that TOO logical? Just imagine how much money the city would have saved if they did the works at once.
Ya that sounds great, but it's kind of like a pack of trucks tailgating on the highway. It's more efficient, but if a tire blows on the first one, the whole project becomes one big pileup.
That's what happened on Bloor AFAIK, when Hydro One discovered that a transformer bunker was taller than the drawings showed. Every contractor lined up to work after them was delayed and the costs went through the roof.
Armchair civil engineers!
But nope, just another article complaining about construction.
Also, Virko Motors, who can't have sold a car in years. They have got to be a mob front.
Improvements to our utilities are necessary and beautification of our streets and sidewalks are needed and wanted, but ouch, does it ever hurt!
Communities should utilize there BIA's and possibly start up 'construction funds' which can help community shop owners help make ends meat and mitigate losses during lengthy construction processes. Create a kind of insurance float where business owners contribute during high-time to help cover each other in low-times. Like I said I'm no businessman (My old man was) but and idea like that seems simple enough in implementing if the will is there.
And I do agree with some posters who point to the fact that Dundas West was a transitioning strip, a lot of shops were on the brink before construction and I feel some would use it as a convenient scape. You did not see the calamity of complaints on Bloor Street, yes they are high end shops with large budgets and resources but they put up the money for the construction and understood the ramifications, and also the benefits in the end it would grant.
The time it takes the average infrastructure project to be completed in Ontario is still quite high compared to other locales.
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(The current mess on the 401 westbound collectors near Jane comes to mind: 4 pm Wednesday when I crawled by, all the heavy equipment lay empty, workers long gone with 5 hours of daylight left!) Meanwhile, normally merely 'bad' traffic has become unimaginably horrible due to the lane closure that will probably take the summer.
Two years ago, I watched as a major intersection in Sao Paulo needed some concrete work. Traffic was closed at this incredibly busy intersection (8 lanes over, 6 lanes under, something this pissant city doesn't even have an intersection similar to this) at 6 pm on Friday and work continued round the clock until Monday morning when it was completed and reopened for the morning rush.
For those armchair critics who have never run their own business, I strongly suggest you STFU. It is tough to make money in retail these days. The taxes, fees and regulatory charges are terrible. If you're operating on a 20% margin, your doing fantastic, but with margins that tight how do you armchair critics propose a small business owner hang on for THREE YEARS?
The city needs to look at its processes and look for ways to make them more efficient. I am not alone in being fed up with seeing piles of rusting (new) streetcar tracks piled up, blocking at least 1 lane of traffic on a street that is not even involved in the 'improvements' for year and years.
It doesn't take an engineer to recognize when a project has run amok: just look for all the hardhats standing around doing nothing day after day, or heavy equipment that is rusted in place.
BIAs should work with their Councillor and the city engineers on upcoming and ongoing projects and should be prepared to help pay for that premium cost if they want to limit the impact of the construction.
The impacts of construction are not the sole "fault" of the contractors or the City, and if an issue comes up, then ALL parties (BIAs, Councillors, Engineers, Contractors) should work together to find an appropriate solution. Complaining about it isn't going to help these businesses out, and it isn't going to make the construction finish any quicker.
Those Dundas sidewalks were already narrow, but for some bizarre reason the city thought they should be cluttered up even more with multiple borders of cheap-looking (but expensive to install) fake cobble stones. Trees, while great to have in abundance in appropriate places, should not be plunked down in the middle of the narrow pedestrian path, further reducing the walkable width of the sidewalk to a single lane. Given the city's record, those trees will likely die from salt poisoning within two years anyway.
Those new sidewalks are such a cluttered mess now, I avoid walking them if possible.
You are correct. Unfortunately, folks look at these projects and generally take the exact opposite lesson. Private contractors do a slow job, and so people conclude that City staff suck. And because City staff supposedly suck, we don't want to pay more to get these jobs done faster.
These long projects are exactly what you should expect from this tightwad city, and it will only get worse as we seek even cheaper solutions, and as we replace workers accountable to the public interest with more privatization.
London? London!
I'm shocked that anyone would make such a comment. London - and the entire country of England - is notorious for slow, bureaucratic, and endless construction. Watching the progress of the recent Fulton Street subway station rebuild in New York, which began in 2005, with completion pushed back from 2007 to 2014, I have a hard time believing New York does any better than Toronto. Can't speak for Chicago much ... last time I was there, I was warned not to even take the El past a certain station, as it was too dangerous for people with certain colours of skin.
Why do people who hate Toronto so much always have such BS stories about how the roads are paved with gold elsewhere?
People whine if they do all the construction at once, and it takes forever. People whine if they do it in bits, to make it less painful, but it lingers on. People whine when the work isn't done, and needs doing.