On King, change has come ‘like a snap of the fingers’
At first, it is a shock to behold. And then, after a few minutes, it’s difficult to remember what it used to look like before the construction.
King Street between Victoria and Wellington streets has been closed for two years, while construction teams pushed the railway line up, built a bridge to support it, and re-engineered the street to go way down underneath.
Now, the railway soars seven or eight metres above King Street. It’s difficult to believe that those tracks once rumbled under your car tires.
When this bright, airy stretch of road, bisected by the Ion light rail line, opens to traffic soon, there will be plenty to marvel at, and perhaps some things to feel sad about.
The intersection of King and Breithaupt streets that once took you straight into the shopping plaza, where King Framing and the liquor store were, is gone. King and Breithaupt streets have been lowered. From that intersection, the plaza now looks as if it’s up on a mountain.
King Framing has moved away and so have others. A few businesses struggle on in the plaza, but some owners say they have lost up to 70 per cent of their trade because it’s so hard for customers to find their stores.
The shuttered McDonald’s fast-food restaurant at Moore Avenue sits high above the newly-lowered street as well. Its windows are boarded up, its paint is peeling, and giant concrete blocks stand in its old drive-through lane, to discourage trespassers.
But there is new life blooming on the strip, too. At King and Louisa streets, a six-storey condo development named Midtown Lofts is rising.
It looks attractive in its green-andblue outdoor drywall, with huge picture windows for each unit. You can hear the bang of construction from blocks away.
Jacob Connolly, a framer and drywaller on the project, sits on a low wall nearby, taking a cigarette break.
What used to be here, on this site? I ask him.
For a minute, he can’t remember. “I’ve lived here all my life,” he says in surprise. Yet when change comes, it’s so quick: “Like a snap of the fingers,” he says.
After a while we figure out what has gone: a pizza shop frequented by students and a manicure shop, plus some houses on Louisa Street.
Across King Street, the graceful old Ratz-Bechtel funeral home, now overgrown with ivy and surrounded by tall weeds, has been acquired by the Zehr Group as part of a massive, mixed-use redevelopment.
The neighbourhood to the north of this part of King Street was once called North Ward. It was home to many blue-collar families who worked in factories nearby.
But North Ward, too, is slipping away. The area is called Midtown now, and it’s the up-and-coming neighbourhood for young professionals to move to. The area has already attracted tens of millions of dollars in investments.
People were flocking to this part of town before the light rail line began construction, but “adding the Ion makes the trajectory that much faster,” said Thomas Schmidt, commissioner of transportation for the Region of Waterloo.
The infusion of funds is good for the businesses who somehow survived the construction, and for the whole area. It will unquestionably become more vibrant, more attractive, wealthier and safer. But how will we remember the old places?