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Fez Batik to be turned into homeless shelter

I'm involved in the club industry and initially I was furious that my councillor, elected to represent me, is doing everything but.

Now I see that the club district is simply shifting West.

Several high end clubs are popping up along King St. between Spadina and Bathurst. It seems that every few months, there's a new one.

For the more artsy crowd, West Queen West is the spot to be. The patio lovers can find what they like on College St. The younger crowd is still hanging out in the current club district but a replacement for it is beginning to mount East of the traditional Richmond + Peter concentration, now beginning to center on John instead.

It looks like the while the city is losing a unique space – a concentration of entertainment within a small area – we're not losing the quality and quantity of entertainment venues available in the city.

In 10 years, club owners and promoters will have simply moved on into these thematically separate areas and the former club district will have lost all the tourist and entertainment revenue that has made it great.
 
The clubs allowed on the west side of Spadina (to Bathurst) must be of a smaller size than those on the east side, are they not?
 
I think a lot of clubs on the west side use a loophole by declaring themselves "lounge/restaurants", justified by adding a dining component to what is essentially a club after about 11 or so.
 
^ which is great! Although I strongly endorse the concept of the club district, the one shortcoming is that during the day, those buildings aren't used.

I like what's developing on West Queen West and West King st West. Restaurants during the day, nightclubs/bars at night. The Drake is a great example and of course also serves as a hotel. More of these please!
 
thedeepend said:
i would say that the skew to the left is accounted for by the fact that the vast majority of highly educated people skew to the left.
Click to expand...

Libertarians are usually considered the torch bearers for high IQs.
 
As a note..

There will not be anymore clubs/lounges opening up in King West.

Allied Properties essentially owns the entire block and are intent on minimizing their riskier club/lounge leases.

The decentralization of the club district is typical of large cities. Take Manhattan for example. There is no "club district". Rather there are several nodes with entertainment hubs catering to different demographics.

The club zone NEEDS to decentralize. The area encompasses valuable real estate that can be used for a variety of mixed-use applications. That being said, there is no reason why we cannot have clubs on the ground floors of retail/office complexes.

Adam Vaughan, while making some prudent decisions, has totally lost his mind on the homeless shelter idea. I take this viewpoint from several stakeholder views: as a nearby resident, a property developer/investor, a tax payer, and a general urbanist. His move is completely counter-intuative to Toronto's plan of transforming into a cultural hub.

I look forward to seeing Toronto's transformation over the next few years and I am sure that we will have many more controversial issues (such as this), to chat about.
 
UrbanSustainability said:
The decentralization of the club district is typical of large cities. Take Manhattan for example. There is no "club district". Rather there are several nodes with entertainment hubs catering to different demographics.
Click to expand...
Agree, but we can't create these other nodes as the city will only allow clubs south of Queen.
 
As a funny aside, I've found that many economic libertarians and anarcho capitalists (and people who think that Frances Fukuyama has gone all soft) are generally very intelligent, quite educated...and stinking poor! There seems to be this fierce pride that even if they're making $10 an hour, and arguably living a lifestyle that's barely above social assistance, they did it "all by themselves, dammit".

On the flipside, I've found that a lot of people who are quite leftist and idealistic are from economically privileged families. They used their wealth in university to build schools in Nicaragua or volunteer at NGOs during the summer while the rest of us had to find work to pay off student debts.

Incidentally, I've found just as many smart right wingers as left wingers among the general public. Left-leaning politicians tend to have a little more integrity, though.
 
After a long while, back to the topic at hand, construction is under way on the 3rd floor addition to the building on the NE corner of Peter and Richmond:
peter.jpg
 
Oh sadness. I loved Gypsy Co-Op and Fez Batik....sorry to see those places disappear. Opening a homeless shelter there is not ideal, maybe they should open one at Bay & University instead.
 
Moonmoth said:
Oh sadness. I loved Gypsy Co-Op and Fez Batik....sorry to see those places disappear. Opening a homeless shelter there is not ideal, maybe they should open one at Bay & University instead.
Click to expand...

uh, what?? Bay and University don't intersect.:confused:
 
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