Businesses at odds over College St. construction
Merchant-led beautification project puts shops through the wringer
Robert Burns is not sure his 12-year-old cheese shop can survive construction disruption that forces customers to navigate fencing, dodge bulldozers and cross a sandy trench just to buy some brie.
“Walk-in traffic has disappeared. Moms with strollers — forget it.
“I’m treading water,” Burns says in his La Fromagerie on College St. west of Ossington Ave.
Construction delays, cost increases, flooded basements and gas leaks — what’s happening this summer on College between Havelock and Shaw Sts. is part of a tradition that has seen merchants suffer in recent years through work on Roncesvalles Ave., Avenue Rd., St. Clair Ave. W., Leslie St. and Queens Quay.
What’s different is that, instead of shaking their fists at the city, or the TTC, or Waterfront Toronto, these merchants have to look a little closer to home for answers on the sidewalk reconstruction and beautification.
The $3.4-million project is the brainchild of the businesses themselves, in the form of their College Promenade Business Improvement Area. In a novel arrangement, the BIA planned it and is paying — with the help of a city loan — for most of a major reconstruction that is not part of accompanying road or utility work. The city is acting as the project manager overseeing private contractors doing the actual work. Levy-paying BIA members who voted to plunge forward with the micro city-building plan hope interlocked stone sidewalks, new trees and lights, artistic bike posts, “parkettes” at intersections and more will breathe new life into their strip west of bustling Little Italy.
One catalyst was a past BIA initiative — decorative lampposts that proved unpopular with members and left unsightly, asphalt-filled sidewalk cuts for electrical lines.
Toronto’s other BIAs will be watching, but the experiment is bracingly real for north-side College St. businesses hoping the headaches will soon end for them and move across the street.
“It’s a big project, and we are small merchants,” says Julie Fass, a BIA board member and owner of Ziggy’s At Home, a housewares emporium inconvenienced along with the other businesses.
“In the end we decided to invest in ourselves and in the neighbourhood.
“I’ve heard both,” good and bad, she says. “I feel that the grumblers are usually louder than the people who are happy. Hopefully this is a means to an end that will benefit us for many years to come.”
Fass acknowledges hope is dead that each block would be inconvenienced only two to three weeks. Work started in early July and, a month later, businesses still face dirt and construction fencing.
The city now says it hopes work on the north side will be done by the end of August and the south side by the end of October, with finishing touches lasting into November. Information has not always flowed to the merchants, their customers and the delivery people who can’t stop on a street narrowed to one lane in each direction.
“For me, communication has been the biggest struggle and trying to provide that for other businesses has been trying,” Hass says, adding the city is getting better at keeping merchants in the loop.
Lainie Knox, co-owner of Prairie Boy Bread, didn’t know about construction until fences started going up and was ill-prepared for later news that it would drag on longer than forecast.
“I started crying. I’m not a crier,” says Knox. “Our sales are down probably 45 per cent, and we’re a new business. And it’s really, really hard.
“If we’re not here in two months because we couldn’t cope with a 45 per cent drop in sales, I don’t care about the (sidewalk) stones,” she says. “It’s a failed business.”
The pain is not inflicted equally. Merchants who own their buildings can cope better with a temporary income drop. Those who rely on daytime walk-by traffic are hardest hit, while businesses with online sales fare better.
Restaurants that focus on dinner are not suffering so much because construction is usually finished for the day.
Some stopped opening for lunch. Upscale Via Norte decided to shut altogether from July 28 to Sept. 2 after customers cancelled reservations, citing the temporary removal of on-street parking and other problems getting in.
Owner and chef Jose Alves says he hopes to have a finished sidewalk by Sept. 2 but “I seriously doubt that.”
There are, however, business owners convinced this summer of pain will produce years of gain.
“It’s going to be beautiful,” predicts Libby Sinopoli, who has owned Ralph’s Hardware, and the building, since 1995. Her complaining neighbours are, she says, “crybabies.”
“I stay open 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. seven days a week to make it. Why can’t you? If you’re going to make it, you’ve got to be 100 per cent. “