City
Parkdale faces restaurant and bar moratorium
It's Ossington all over again. The stretch of Queen Street between Dufferin and Roncesvalles will not see any new bars or restaurants for at least a year if a temporary bylaw is allowed to run its course. Reported by NOW yesterday morning, the ban prohibits new hospitality businesses and forbids extensions or modifications to existing outlets in the area - including patios - in the hope of preventing the flourishing scene pushing out stores vital to the health of the area.
According to a staff report, complaints from local residents about increased noise, vandalism, garbage, and traffic congestion prompted councillor Gord Perks to push for the restrictions.
Joanna Kimont, a City of Toronto planner, says the action will allow city staff to properly complete a restaurant study on the area designed to report on how the bar boom is affecting the neighborhood. Though it's some way from completion, the study could restrict to the size and distribution of businesses along this stretch of Queen Street.
"Any applications that have already been submitted for a building permit or otherwise, those are being reviewed by our buildings division in conjunction with our legal staff to determine the status of the applications and how, if at all, they are impacted by this bylaw."
Popular taco and bourbon joint Grand Electric at Queen and Elm Grove submitted a liquor license application for a new second floor extension just a few months ago. It's still in the works, and the new embargo could delay the project at least while the city figures out how to handle active applications for alterations.
Further west at Capital Espresso, owner/operator Damien Zielinski thinks the restrictions won't help new startups or more established eating and drinking spots.
"It definitely contradicts the interests of small business people," he says. "I think when a new bar or restaurant opens on the strip it benefits all of us, speaking as someone who lives and works in the area."
"A lot of the small businesses here have created an atmosphere of success [but] are still working very hard. It's not like we're all laughing with business to spare."
Closer to Roncesvalles, John Silva, co-owner of Poor John's Cafe, is of a similar mind.
"For the people on the cusp of starting their businesses, it's a terrible thing to do to them for sure. I understand where this is coming from but this isn't the way to address it. It's like shutting the barn door after the horses have already gotten out."
Is it a good idea to slow the Parkdale boom or is this a blow to the local area? Should the city cap the number of restaurants and bars in Parkdale?
Images: "Parkdale" by Craz11 from the blogTO Flickr pool and City of Toronto.
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Whatever you do Toronto, don' t let big scary FOOD and creativity come in and ruin those safe and cheerful deserted storefronts.
Toronto. I'll never understand this place.
Gordon Perks, get a grip on reality. You should be limiting the amount of legal rooming housings. Close the illegal rooming houses. Clean up the drug trade on Queen st. Shutting down the crack-whore trade on King st.
Must Parkdale continue to be only the epicenter of drug addicts, prostitutes, ex-cons, and people with mental disabilities?
Do not smoulder free enterprise.
But an outright ban is just a simplistic non-solution.
I disagree with mobo that bars and restaurants bring retail. Their tendency is to expand and multiply until galleries, stores and services are pushed out of the neighbourhood and it becomes an "entertainment destination" rather than a community.
It's already happening because of parts & labour, 90% of their patrons don't live in parkdale and don't give a shit about the neighbourhood. Good on Gord Perks to take a breather and examine what's happening before it gets to a point where residents are moving out because of noise and obnoxious scenesters.
I live in parkdale. I frequent restaurants and shops on ossington, leslieville, little portugal, little italy etc.
I am grateful that those communities and businesses welcome me.
also (residents are moving out because of noise and obnoxious scenesters ) I am 47 years old. What obnoxious scenesters are you talking about? When I stroll through parkdale in the evenings, I see vibrant, healthy, happy young people having fun. I much prefer to see this than gangsters, crackheads, whores, alcoholics, and an abundance of mentally challeged people ( due to the high concentration of rooming houses). And it is this reason that people were fleeing Parkdale for the past 30 years.
more crack heads and the mentally unstable!
lets keep Parkdale real!
Parkdale grow into the culinary destination it is sooo desperately wants to become, much unlike roncesvilles! Certainly Gord Perks had no problem with the city handing out
liquor licenses to anyone who wanted to start a business on roncy (who is a very residential area)
So why does he have such a problem with parkdale?
I believe that Gord Perks is holding back the gentrification
of parkdale for his own agenda and its u to us as residents to fight him
and get him out of office ... this guys' a CLOWN
In terms of legalities, I don't think you need notice for an interim control bylaw, but you need to enact a study. But think the fact that this study was begun 2 years ago is a complete farce. This ICBL is completely bad faith.
And as mentioned previously, this is all done to put a stop on Parts and Labour, and Wrongbar. This is to appease residents. It's not going to work anyways, the businesses will just wait just like on Ossington. An ICBL is a complete waste of time.
Parkdale puts a freeze on bars & restuarants? Good, there are more than enough already. So open a different business if you guys are such hot shot "entrepeneurs". The less drunks the better.
Parkdale is home to tons of new immigrants and/or low income people. There are thousands squished into apartments in the neighbourhood. But there isn't even a bakery on Queen Street, and no decent grocery store.
Bars and restos are great, but eighty per cent of the population will never see the inside of them.
(And to you again, mobo: you want to limit rooming houses, huh? Good luck with that... you'll be following in the footsteps of the many yuppies before you.)
But how does an interim control bylaw effect housing affordability? Do you really think that this ICBL has anything to do with the poor in Parkdale? It doesn't. If it did, Gord Perks would be on his soapbox imploring the city to urge the province to alter the Residential Tenancies Act and to get the Tower Renewal Department more funding. Instead he's sponsoring actions that appease homeowners that get him reelected.
There's much talk of how new immigrants couldn't possibly afford the (quite honestly, really expensive) bars on Queen Street, but the fact that there are now businesses making money in the area means that the immigrants won't have difficulty finding nearby jobs, giving them the money that they can, eventually, use to spend on the local economy.
I worked in PK for 3 years, and I can say the rapidly gentrifying Queen Street combined with the still working-class residents has made Parkdale probably the edgiest district in Toronto, and by far my favourite place there. Trying to control the free market can only make the existing bars and nightclubs much richer with little actual gains to the community; We won't see Queen lose any more of its boarded-up storefronts, only less work to be had along the street
Get some damn perspective.
Parkdale is exactly what Leslieville was 8 years
ago... I remember city councillors really spearheading the
gentrification of Leslieville (not hindering it) which gave the
Prospective bakery and little start-ups the confidence to go ahead and
Take a chance on the shithole that the Eastend was.
Gord Perks is the exact opposite! All you idiots that don't
want bars and restaurants in parkdale!??? I guess you prefer
Boarded up storefronts? Wake up every chef in town is clamering to get a liquor license in parkdale
But Gord Perks won't let them!
And to Gabe, who has lived in the nabe for 5 years and only gone out for dinner/drinks once or twice - I guess you sleep in Parkdale, but I wouldn't say *live* here.
And for that matter, Gord Perks is also a rare breed on council, representing a ward he doesn't live in.
You're hilarious contention that immigrants can find jobs at restaurants and bars in order to "afford" these gentrified places of business is ridiculous. Restaurants and bars provide the worst jobs for migrants, often paying them under the table, less than minimum wage, and no job security whatsoever. At best, someone might aspire to becoming a line cook and making just above poverty level wages. You're entire post is infuriating, it reads like a high school students first exposure to capitalism.
so this is no surprise.
The BIA needs to stick it to him. Perks will be the first to have 'a shooting up gallery' - a safe injection site in Parkdale so that the pushers will frequent Queen St. as before to sell their shit to the addict before going for their fix.
Now that would really set us back light-years.
Vote him out of office if you really care about building a balanced healthy community.
Also, you used the wrong 'your' every time.
I agree that the city should have a plan in place for growing new commercial zones, and they should do everything possible to encourage diversity - if only so we don't end up with entire blocks that only open after 5:00pm.
And if you really want to improve the area - crack down on some of the long standing 'violation' restaurants instead of limiting the new additions. Take a look at Friends on King, Sun Fa on Queen, Happy Time on Queen etc... The few remaining pockets are anchored by rathole bars. Deal with them and the area will drastically improve.
What???
PS. There's a FreshCo at Queen and Gladstone, and another No Frills at King and Jameson, and Metro down in Liberty Village. Never mind several small groceries along Queen. Open your eyes. We did have a bakery once, but it burned down, remember? I miss that place. We have three drug stores (Shoppers, Rexall and the down at the heels IDA), several small convenience stores, several clothing stores, both vintage and new, plus the Sally Ann, a used bookstore, independent coffee places, a Vietnamse restaurant, a food co-op, a library, a big fabric store, a small fabric store that offers classes and rents time on sewing machines, several jewelry stores, plus a few places that were there before I moved into the neighbourhood, that family clothing store that I can't recall the name of. That's just a small number of thriving, non-bar/restaurant boom businesses that I can think of off the top of my head.
Hipsters? I'm 40 years old. I'm not sure what the fuck a hipster is.
Keep Parkdale Poor!
Way to go City. Clearly we have too much business going on. The only jobs councilors want are more public sector jobs that they can influence come election time.
We should get a new slogan. How about this?
Toronto: keep it lame.
I have lived in Parkdale long enough to remember what it was like before the bars and restaurants opened.
It was unsafe at night. I was threatened with stabbing walking to the corner store for smokes by looking at someone the wrong way. Fights, robbery, screams all hours of the night (on the same block as Parts and Labour is now).
Hookers owned the corners, johns prowled the streets night and day! Crackheads defecated in parks, winos pulled mattresses out of dumpsters and put them near the playgrounds in parkettes as a free place to flop, get bombed and fight.
Bystanders were getting shot and killed just walking past the gambling dens that pretended to by taverns (The club that was in the Wrong bar location - look it up).
And the cops could care less. Parkdale was more trouble that it was worth (I was this told by a beat cop).
And now, give me a break - black and white.
There are still gross parts (I mean you Queen and Jameson) but I am not taking my life in my hands going for a meal after dark. Police have a reason to patrol the streets when there are businesses with an investment to protect and decent people who are not looking for trouble (well, maybe too many cocktails and a easy hook-up).
The new places are doing their part in keeping things clean and controlled. The real assholes have moved on since they no longer have a seat at the table.
And we need to put a stop to this?
I think the problem is Perks doesn't live here, never lived here and will never live here. He was parachuted in by Miller to be his environmental deputy, not to serve the people of this community. He will never have a perspective on the hood and when his political days are over he will never return to visit.
There are good patrons to these, there are also bad. Lately we have numerous late night partiers stopping at 2:00 a.m. to use the local park as a place to relieve their overfull bladders. We've had fights in the laneway, including one where a very drunken male threatened to shoot his girlfriend (so cool!) and have had to clean up vomit from the sidewalk in front of the house on a number of occassions.
No this is not every night, and no it is not restaurants such as Satiasian, M&B Yummy, or Chantcler which are the source of the problem. Sadly, though our licensing commission does not recognize the difference between the two.
In all fairness to Gord Perks, he is not acting on his own. I have been on the e-mail chains and can confirm that a number of residents have been raising concerns. Gord has been specifically asked by a number of people to deal with the issue of the proliferation of bars in the neighbourhood and the subsequent problems.
We may not all agree, but he is acting at the request of at least some of his constituents. Let's hope the breather gives time to reach an accord on how to move forward and doesn't stunt the good progress we have seen!
CM, I can see your point, although I've not personally had issues with bar patrons. Then again, I live across the street from the Beer Store, so I have my own special issues from that. :)
Folks, commenting on the internet is one thing - attending a resident's association meeting or actually being involved in your community is another. Hope to see you all at the town hall meeting on the 26th of November.
As for having a healthy mix of businesses in the area, well let's remember that they are businesses - they should be able to survive by providing something that's needed and doing it well. We shouldn't be trying to program the commercial mix of the neighbourhood.
These people will not be housed or helped by gentrification - they will only be pushed out of their community. Out of the sights of the oblivious priviledged people.
I applaud Mr Perks! Keep Parkdale Real!!!!
I've been living in Parkdale for 6+ years. Not that long, but long enough to witness significant change. Residing on Queen, I can attest to the fact that the strip has become MUCH nosier in recent years. The pre-wrongbar evenings were a dream — I slept like a baby. Not anymore. But oh well, I live on a busy artery and earplugs are cheap.
However, I'm still in favour of what Perks is after - more balance for the community. There is an overabundance of bars and we really don't need any more at the moment. Clubland is toast and people now party in smaller establishments all over the city. I get it. But, I think Parkdale has has been more-than-welcoming to the influx of revelers and it's time to maintain things without letting the post-midnight "scene" get any bigger. It's true that the older establishments like Stones Lounge are attracting a lot of the shit-faced youth, but that doesn't mean Parkdale shouldn't check it's speed and take a rest for a bit.
Who knew?
Honey QUICK! Take out all our RSSP funds and invest it in club sandwiches and pancakes! We are going to be RICH!
www wewatchthematch com
There are loads of affordable bars showing sports events while taking reservation for FREE, be it in Parkdale or anywhere else.