West Queen West Triangle Development

The West Queen West Neighbourhood

West Queen West is a neighbourhood located along Queen Street West from Bathurst Street to Dufferin. It consists of numerous galleries, restaurants and various retail stores. A few students including myself did a project in the neighbourhood for its budding Business Improvement Association earlier this year in ways to transform the area into a tourism destination.

The Drake Hotel, a landmark destination for WQW

During that time, WQW was going through a battle that endangered the current image and lifestyle of the neighbourhood.

West Queen West Triangle

What the Triangle looks like at the moment

The threat (or opportunity, depending on how you see it) it faced is similar among numerous Toronto neighbourhoods – the influx of condominiums. The existing way of life and culture could disappear due to gentrification of the area with new population coming in along with the developments. It can be an opportunity this way as it brings new life to a possibly deteriorating neighbourhood and raises property value, etc. etc. You’ve heard it all before.

A similar threat was posed in the West Queen West neighbourhood earlier this year as WESTside Lofts and Bohemian Embassy wanted to build a condos within the West Queen West Triangle – marketed towards the young and hip. This would raise the price of rent in the area substantially and in turn, would force out the artists who call the area home.

Angry at gentrification

An association called Active 18 – consisting of citizens, residents and the business-owners association – spearheaded the battle against the condo developers in hopes to save the character of their neighbourhood. It was an up and down battle, even got Mayor Miller involved. The area would have lost its integrity and culture which it was so known for and residents would do anything to save it.

At the end of October, two agreements were reached as is as follows:

150 Sudbury St. – West Side Lofts, a Landmark Development Corporation condominium (design pictured above):

- 56,000 square feet sold to Toronto Artscape at a significant discount for artist live/work studios, of which approximately 52 units would be affordable for low-income artists
- $250,000 towards the cost of relocating the Toronto Public Health offices out of the Beatrice Lilly Centre (also known as the Carnegie Library building)
- $1 million towards the restoration and conversion of the historic Carnegie Library building from municipal offices to a Performing Arts Hub

45 Lisgar St. - a rental apartment building by Medallion Corporation:

- 10,000 square feet for new offices for Public Health at no cost over a 50-year period
- Toronto Public Health will relocate their offices from the Beatrice Lilly Centre at 1115 Queen Street W. so the building can be converted to a theatre

There were previously signed agreements with developers also include community contributions:

1171 Queen St. W. – Bohemian Embassy Condos by Baywood Homes:

- $500,000 for community arts infrastructure

48 Abell, an old warehouse in the Queen West Triangle

48 Abell St. – a developer, Verdiroc, with an affordable housing provider, St. Clare’s Multi-Faith:
- 190 affordable housing units, funded through the City and which include 28 artist live/work studios at affordable rents
- a minimum of six artist work studios (approximately 3600 sq. ft. of space) along the new Creative Mews - studios will be sold to the City at below market rates.

So a solution of exchanging density for affordable housing was an approach for both the residents and developers to agree on. More density - the developers - for more units of affordable housing - WQW. It will be interesting to see what will happen to the West Queen West community after these condos go up.

To know more about this issue, check out the links:

http://active18.org/

http://www.toronto.ca/planning/westqueenwest.htm#studyarea

http://www.westqueenwest.ca/