Dundas West
The hipster gentrification of all these old shopping strips is really quite remarkable. It's pretty unique in its scale in all of North America outside New York. I wonder what will be next. I guess Parkdale and Leslieville are pretty obvious. I think Roncesvalles is going to become more and more like College Street. After that, I'd expect the Junction and even more on St. Clair West. I'd also expect more of this stuff on north-south streets. It's already happening on Ossington. Dufferin might be next.
I also suspect that this kind of gentrification will hold up better in the recession. While some high-end galleries might not do so well, a lot of people are going to be looking for lower-cost spaces in new fringe neighbourhoods.
Dundas West: Cooler than New York
DEIRDRE KELLY
November 22, 2008
The Globe and Mail
When José Ortega opened Lula Lounge, a nightclub specializing in world music and jazz, on Dundas West in 2002, the street was a low-rent zone of bakeries, car garages, sheet metal and plumbing suppliers and a rash of sports bars. "Seven years ago, the area had this ugly-duckling vibe," he says. "But ... it felt more authentic, more real, a working-class neighbourhood where artists and bakers and construction workers and store owners come and do their work."
Last month, when the Alison Smith Gallery opened at Dundas West and Gladstone, it was the latest sign of the once-homely neighbourhood's transformation.
Deluxe bakery She Takes the Cake, food market Multiple Organics and video store West Side Stories all opened within the year. Soon, Grain, Curd & Bean, a high-end cheese shop, will go into business there.
Ms. Smith's gallery is the third to open on the strip - after Wil Kusey's LE Gallery to the east and Jessica Bradley Art + Projects to the west.
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Ms. Smith chose the neighbourhood because she wanted to get away from "the brand clutter" and higher rents of Queen Street West. Her gallery space, located in a building that operated as a dry-goods store before she purchased it with her husband, author Larry Gaudet, just over a year ago, has a rental value of about $20 a square foot, which is less than half of the current rental rate on Queen Street West.
"It is less expensive and off the beaten track, in a good way. It has a downtown spirit. And it doesn't feel like a shopping mall."
Ms. Bradley, a former curator of contemporary art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, was drawn to the Dundas and Dufferin area three years ago for similar reasons. "I could see what was going on, down on Queen Street, where the rents were doubling and tripling, driving the galleries out. ... When I saw this space, I just thought it was in the right zone."
Thanks to the opening in June of DuWest Art Centre, a nearby artist-run collective, she can also check out the work of emerging local artists.
According to Sylvia Fernandez, head of the two-year-old Dundas Street West Business Improvement Area, 13 new and innovative businesses have opened over the past year, driving down the vacancy rate for commercial properties to 13 per cent from last September's 19 per cent. (The Parkdale Village BIA vacancy rate is 9 per cent, while that of the Junction Gardens BIA is about 6 per cent.)
"There aren't any big chains here," said Ms. Fernandez, a bookkeeper whose office has been on Dundas Street West for the past seven years.
To attract more galleries and specialty businesses, the BIA has established a $400,000 capital budget "to dress up the neighbourhood," as Ms. Fernandez puts it. Improvements include decorative paving and street furniture.
Lula Lounge's Mr. Ortega, an internationally acclaimed graphic artist, is also on the BIA board and he, too, is contributing to the beautification. Mr. Ortega has created brightly coloured street banners for Dundas Street West, which feature a pair of open hands cradling a neighbourhood growing beneath a golden sun. "That's what I think of the neighbourhood," Mr. Ortega says from his art studio on Dundas West. "It is vibrant, on the cusp of change, but still friendly and unpretentious. For me, it's cooler than New York."
