Yonge and St. Clair due for rebirth
Yonge and St. Clair used to be s omewhere. By day it was home to major corporations: CFRB, CHUM, Imperial Oil and the Weston empire. By night, two first- run cinemas had hordes lining up all the way around the northeast corner f or summer premières. Those people needed to eat, and people opened buzzworthy places to feed them: DiMaggio’s, Bofinger, Rhodes, Chandler’s, Bocca.
It was important enough a destination to be mocked. “If your T- shirt has an alligator on it, your Sportsac is genuine and your mustard is Dijon, you belong,” restaurant critic Joanne Kates wrote of the neighbourhood on June 30, 1984, a week be- fore my eighth birthday.
But I and my born- lucky friends from Moore Park, Rosedale and Forest Hill knew nothing of this. For us, Yonge and St. Clair was simply the perfect place to explore the limits of our new- found 12- year- old freedom — safe, salubrious, close to home but still genuinely urban.
All of which is to say, I have extremely fond memories. And walking around there recently, I was downright astonished at the state of the joint.
“Years ago we had five movie screens, we had an LCBO, we had Bofinger, we had Tom Kristenbrun’s restaurant ( Rhodes), we had the best bookstore in the city ( Lichtman’s),” recalls Stephen Cameronsmith, a real estate development consultant and vice-president of the Deer Park Residents Association, who has lived in the area for decades.
“We had Leonard Furs, we had Ira Berg — the fancy ladies’ clothing store. We had all types of really neat and wonderful retail.
“And ( now) it’s just gone to hell in a handcart.” He does not exaggerate. The cinemas are l ong gone — CHUM too, and Imperial Oil, and more recently CFRB. That I knew. But vacant storefronts, right in the heart of the city? A proliferation of dollar stores and nail salons?
“It certainly wouldn’t be one of our top recommended l ocations,” says David Hopkins, president of restaurant consultants The Fifteen Group. “My wife and I live in the area, and we certainly don’t go to Yonge and St. Clair if we’re looking for somewhere to eat.”
As local Coun. Josh Matlow aptly puts it, this onceproud destination has been reduced to “a place between Yonge and Eglinton and Bloor Street.”
There is no earthly reason it should be like this. The area’s population is just as affluent as it was in my day; the transit links are superb. At long last, a renaissance may be at hand. In recent years Slate Asset Management bought eight office towers in the area, including those on all four corners of Yonge and St. Clair.
“It ’s t he only ( case) I know of on a major road where the four corners are consolidated under one landlord,” says Lucas Manuel, who’s in charge of the project. “We have an opportunity to make some big and fast and consolidated chan- ges to the neighbourhood.”
Renderings s how t he northwest corner at street level transformed into an attractive two- storey glassfronted restaurant space, with a ground- level patio. Vancouver-based coffee purveyor JJ Bean is set to open this summer in the lobby of 2 St. Clair W.
On the northeast corner, renovations are underway. The sidewalk- darkening overhang will go, and the TD branch will present itself to the street instead of hiding behind covered windows. Naturally, there will be a Starbucks.
Slate is focused on attracting “the type of tenant base that can support an improved retail base.”
This summer, British artist Phlegm will paint a mural on the west- facing wall of the Padulo building, on the southwest corner.
It’s an unusual choice for such a staid neighbourhood, and Matlow admits to some trepidation. “Some of his work is on the dark, spidery side,” he says. But even if people hate it, it will at least attract some attention to the area — and attention is exactly what it needs.
Matlow attributes t he neighbourhood’s stagnation, in part, to factors that could spark a turnaround.
“Developers have been acquiring various properties ... to consolidate them to create footprints to build towers,” he says — but haven’t yet built them.
The Westons own almost the entire block northeast of Yonge and St. Clair, which was long ago approved for residential development. More controversially, on the east side of Yonge south of St. Clair, Terracap wants to build a 42-storey tower.
Matlow thinks it’s too tall, too dense and not set back enough from the area’s narrow sidewalks. (It has a prehearing at the Ontario Municipal Board on Aug. 2.) But as a general principle, more people will certainly help.
My Yonge and St. Clair is long gone. No more movies, no more Toby’s, no more Baskin Robbins. In a way I wish it were otherwise. But this is a city whose neighbourhoods relentlessly and unsentimentally reinvent themselves. It’s about time Yonge and St. Clair got on with it.