Ban on new Parkdale watering holes
One-year moratorium in response to increase in area’s liquor licences
“Partydale” is getting a timeout. New restaurants, bars, bakeries, rooftop patios or “places of amusement” on the main commercial strip through the Parkdale neighbourhood (Queen St. W. between Roncesvalles Ave. and Dufferin St.) have been banned for a year as the city completes a study on changing the area zoning bylaw.
“I’m worried that the neighbourhood is hitting a tipping point,” said Councillor Gord Perks (Ward 14, Parkdale-High Park) who introduced the moratorium to city council after noting the constant stream of liquor licence applications in the area and complaints from residents about vandalism, noise, garbage and congestion.
“We’re already at a point where a third of all the businesses in the area are restaurants. We’re at the point where sidewalks are jammed every Friday night at 1 a.m.”
The interim bylaw, passed by council on Oct. 30, 2012, requires no advance notice or community consultation. It was previously used on a strip of Ossington Ave. beginning in 2009 before a more permanent
“I’m worried that the neighbourhood is hitting a tipping point.”
COUNCILLOR GORD PERKS
WARD 14, PARKDALE-HIGH PARK
zoning bylaw was passed, restricting new bars, cafés, restaurants, bakeries and takeout establishments to ground-level and of a size no more than 225 square metres.
Both residents and business owners are unsure how the Ossington approach will work in Parkdale.
The Parkdale community is ethnically diverse, home to new im- migrants and neighbourhood stalwarts, with dramatic disparities in income that are reflected in the storefronts along the main Parkdale strip. Gleaming boutiques and hip coffee shops sit side-by-side with battered corner stores and thrift shops. Some storefronts are dusty and shuttered — which local business owners say is due to esca- lating rents in the increasingly desirable area, rather than the influx of nightlife venues that Perks says is turning the area into a new Entertainment District. GO Lounge — a small board-game café that will soon be Parkdale’s answer to Bloor St.’s Snakes and Lattes — just squeaked in with its business permit before the ban fell.
Theirs is one of three businesses on the strip in the process of applying for a liquor licence, hoping to join the 43 licensed establishments in the area.
Co-owner Samantha Lerner says she and partner Alisa Sadler are concerned that the bylaw puts them in the same category as disruptive bars and will limit healthy growth in the area.
The sudden ban caught Parkdale businesses by surprise, says Anna Bartula, executive director of the Parkdale BIA. “It’s important to take the time and do studies to find out what the best route is for the community, but I don’t know if this is really the right way,” she says.
Her first concern: small businesses just starting up.
“I understand the motivations for the ban, and we’re losing control of developments in the area,” says John Silva, a longtime Parkdale resident and co-owner of Poor John’s Café. “But I don’t think it’ll accomplish what (they want it to).”
Perks stresses the ban is a “cooling-off period” that won’t affect bars and restaurants already open.