Toronto's most notorious vacant storefront has finally found a new tenant

A tenant has finally moved into a notoriously vacant storefront in Toronto. We've got our fair share of those here, but this one has been sitting empty for seven years.

It's been up for sale and for lease at various points, and the building itself surprisingly dates back to around 1875.

A development application was made in June 2020 to replace it with a six-storey, mixed-use residential and retail building.

However, it looks like the building is actually now home to a new location of a plant and pot store called Chive: 837 Queen Street West is officially their Canadian headquarters, though the brand operates other stores in the US and the UK.

That's plant pots, not pot plants: Chive isn't one of the many dispensaries that keep popping up absolutely everywhere in Toronto, though it did soft open in the space on 4/20. The store actually used to be located in a 400-square-foot space on College, which it outgrew.

The store sells pots for houseplants in various sizes, and also sells live plants and ceramic flowers.

"Locals have been loving it, and people have been peeking in the floor to ceiling windows," Chive VP of design and development Todd Newgren tells blogTO.

As for the James Dean cutout that sat in the vacant storefront's window for quite some time, apparently he's safely stowed away in the basement.