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G&M 19 AUG 2006
Home makeover? That's nothing
On a tiny block not far from downtown, an entire street is about to be transformed, thanks to a TV show, a developer and a happy coincidence, writes DEIRDRE KELLY
DEIRDRE KELLY
None of the 11 pin-narrow townhouses on Percy Street has a front yard.
All open abruptly onto the 14-foot-wide road that stretches south off King Street East, near Sumach, and dead-ends at an abandoned pre-war playground withering away in the shadow of the Adelaide Street overpass.
Green space is a long-ago memory, dating back perhaps as far as 1885, which is when the street was developed to accommodate the workers who manned the distilleries and slaughterhouses in the area known as the West Don.
Victorian Toronto still sits heavily on the diminutive houses with the peaked mansard roofs. Tiles are cracking and falling off, and paint jobs look patchy and tired. The net effect is like seeing Miss Havisham as architecture -- dishevelled, old, so far beyond being the life of the party that the sight inspires a little gasp of horror: How did things ever get so bad?
Print Edition - Section Front
Enlarge Image
More Arts Stories
CRIME BOOKS
'Have you always been funny?'
Notes from an immobile traveller
SHAW AND STRATFORD 2006
A playwright with a new identity
The horses we rode in on
Go to the Arts section
When venturing outside for air, the tightly knit group of neighbours who live on the street tend to congregate on the stoop of Donna Johnston, at number 7, who has lived there the longest -- "50 years or so," she says, gumming her words.
There, sitting on fold-up chairs, sipping mugs of steaming coffee, the urban hodgepodge of residents, including a factory worker and a left-wing lawyer, a former school-bus driver and a musician, a car-wash jockey and a tattooed barker of a woman known as the street's deputy mayor, have entertained dreams of improving their street and bringing back some of its Old World lustre.
"We have always talked about how nice it would be to fix up the street, to do something with the park," says Ms. Johnston's neighbour, Cynthia Wilkey, who bought her 650-square-foot house in 1988 for $128,000.
"But these are working-class people. There are fixed incomes."
They attempted to revitalize their sad no-name park with their own shrubbery, but it remained unused and a mess -- a situation ripe for a reality-show makeover.
And here is where little Percy Street turns a corner.
Green Force, a new HGTV reno show, is taking the street's barren patch of dirt and turning it -- gratis -- into a $140,000 botanical garden. Call it Extreme Makeover: The Park Edition.
Needless to say, Ms. Wilkey and her neighbours are thrilled. "The idea of getting an improvement as a gift, for free, is very appealing," she says. "It is a bit like winning some kind of a lottery."
Or how about winning it twice? In a parallel development, a $250,000 street-renovation project is scheduled to follow next year under the direction of Streetcar Developments. The developer is planning to build a 44-unit boutique condo/townhouse project at the top of Percy Street where it meets King, and is looking to upgrade the neighbourhood.
That means a significant overhaul for Percy: Streetcar's plans involve widening the street, finishing it with interlocking stone, refurbishing the brick façades of the existing homes, adding lighting and planting trees. Residents will get the bonus of discounted underground parking in the new condo building. And perhaps most importantly to the Percy Street homeowners, Streetcar will replace, at a cost of $40,000 to $60,000, an ancient underground lead water main that has been in a perpetual state of disrepair.
Although that change won't be apparent to visitors, it's significant to the residents, who are among a handful of Torontonians who live on a street that, in a sense, is the equivalent of a sovereign state: Percy Street is privately owned, a holdover from the days when their narrow, little road was a laneway rumoured to be an enclave for bootleggers. The homeowners are responsible for maintaining their own water main, and although they have wanted to replace it for years, they could never to afford to pay for a new one, Ms. Wilkey explains.
So the happy accident of two makeover teams converging on the street is especially welcome.
"The street was our initiative," says Streetcar's vice-president of business development, Jason Garland. "And the park was Green Force's. That was a pure coincidence."
The park revitalization, which began this week, is one of 12 projects that Green Force is tackling for a 13-part series that will air next April. The Percy Street project involves the donated services of landscape architect Haig Seferian, who says the objective is "to make a space that's inviting, that is what the community wants, and that it will, hopefully, take pride in maintaining and spending more time in."
Producer Corinna Lehr, whose Tricon Films & Television is spearheading the makeover, calls the Percy Street park "the ultimate community front yard."
She discovered it after Al Rezoski from the City of Toronto's Clean and Beautiful program took her on a walkabout in search of spaces to revitalize.
"Originally, I saw the opportunity for restoration. But what came through very clear and was key to us getting involved was the sense of community that exists here. This street is a very tight street. It's very involved. They have their own community centre -- it's the street."
And so the neighbours, naturally, have been very involved in the planning process, producing what Mr. Seferian calls "pages and pages of wish lists," as to what they want to see -- and experience -- in the park.
Ms. Wilkey says the Green Force initiative gave the residents "the opportunity to really 'blue-sky' . . . We started thinking that it would also be great to have a gathering place in the park -- a place where we could hang out or have a street BBQ, in addition to transforming it into something more lush and loved."
Easier said than done. Ms. Lehr calls the park a "very challenging space," citing the need for lots of lighting, "so there are no dark corners for illicit activities," and the problem of salt spray spilling off the Adelaide Street extension in winter.
The plan for the new garden, which is expected to be completed next week, includes the planting of 12 maples and one white fir, three spruce and one hemlock, 20 yews and another 20 cedars. There will also be a communal vegetable and herb garden and, yes, a meeting place -- a large ovoid area finished with interlocking stone flanked by wood screens and a sculpture, entitled Rebirth, donated by a local artist.
"I think it's appropriate for what's about to take place in the area," Mr. Seferian offers. "It is a rebirth, of a park and of a community."
Back on Donna Johnston's stoop, the 61-year-old grandmother who has lived in two houses on Percy Street -- her father's and now her own -- is thinking about sustainability. She doesn't even understand the meaning of environmental impact: "Nope. No impact on me, whatsoever."
What she does understand is the fragrant smell of spring blossoms after a winter thaw. And she is looking forward to experiencing that in the neighbourhood's new garden.
"It will look nice when they fix it up," she says. "I think it will make everything look so pretty."
But more than that, Streetcar's Jason Garland says the Percy Street makeover will energize a long-neglected corner of Toronto that has a rich and multifaceted history.
"We're not looking to be urban titans," he says. "We're looking to be urban heroes to our communities. In 10 years' time, we're hoping to drive through this community and feel really good about what we did."
Home makeover? That's nothing
On a tiny block not far from downtown, an entire street is about to be transformed, thanks to a TV show, a developer and a happy coincidence, writes DEIRDRE KELLY
DEIRDRE KELLY
None of the 11 pin-narrow townhouses on Percy Street has a front yard.
All open abruptly onto the 14-foot-wide road that stretches south off King Street East, near Sumach, and dead-ends at an abandoned pre-war playground withering away in the shadow of the Adelaide Street overpass.
Green space is a long-ago memory, dating back perhaps as far as 1885, which is when the street was developed to accommodate the workers who manned the distilleries and slaughterhouses in the area known as the West Don.
Victorian Toronto still sits heavily on the diminutive houses with the peaked mansard roofs. Tiles are cracking and falling off, and paint jobs look patchy and tired. The net effect is like seeing Miss Havisham as architecture -- dishevelled, old, so far beyond being the life of the party that the sight inspires a little gasp of horror: How did things ever get so bad?
Print Edition - Section Front
Enlarge Image
More Arts Stories
CRIME BOOKS
'Have you always been funny?'
Notes from an immobile traveller
SHAW AND STRATFORD 2006
A playwright with a new identity
The horses we rode in on
Go to the Arts section
When venturing outside for air, the tightly knit group of neighbours who live on the street tend to congregate on the stoop of Donna Johnston, at number 7, who has lived there the longest -- "50 years or so," she says, gumming her words.
There, sitting on fold-up chairs, sipping mugs of steaming coffee, the urban hodgepodge of residents, including a factory worker and a left-wing lawyer, a former school-bus driver and a musician, a car-wash jockey and a tattooed barker of a woman known as the street's deputy mayor, have entertained dreams of improving their street and bringing back some of its Old World lustre.
"We have always talked about how nice it would be to fix up the street, to do something with the park," says Ms. Johnston's neighbour, Cynthia Wilkey, who bought her 650-square-foot house in 1988 for $128,000.
"But these are working-class people. There are fixed incomes."
They attempted to revitalize their sad no-name park with their own shrubbery, but it remained unused and a mess -- a situation ripe for a reality-show makeover.
And here is where little Percy Street turns a corner.
Green Force, a new HGTV reno show, is taking the street's barren patch of dirt and turning it -- gratis -- into a $140,000 botanical garden. Call it Extreme Makeover: The Park Edition.
Needless to say, Ms. Wilkey and her neighbours are thrilled. "The idea of getting an improvement as a gift, for free, is very appealing," she says. "It is a bit like winning some kind of a lottery."
Or how about winning it twice? In a parallel development, a $250,000 street-renovation project is scheduled to follow next year under the direction of Streetcar Developments. The developer is planning to build a 44-unit boutique condo/townhouse project at the top of Percy Street where it meets King, and is looking to upgrade the neighbourhood.
That means a significant overhaul for Percy: Streetcar's plans involve widening the street, finishing it with interlocking stone, refurbishing the brick façades of the existing homes, adding lighting and planting trees. Residents will get the bonus of discounted underground parking in the new condo building. And perhaps most importantly to the Percy Street homeowners, Streetcar will replace, at a cost of $40,000 to $60,000, an ancient underground lead water main that has been in a perpetual state of disrepair.
Although that change won't be apparent to visitors, it's significant to the residents, who are among a handful of Torontonians who live on a street that, in a sense, is the equivalent of a sovereign state: Percy Street is privately owned, a holdover from the days when their narrow, little road was a laneway rumoured to be an enclave for bootleggers. The homeowners are responsible for maintaining their own water main, and although they have wanted to replace it for years, they could never to afford to pay for a new one, Ms. Wilkey explains.
So the happy accident of two makeover teams converging on the street is especially welcome.
"The street was our initiative," says Streetcar's vice-president of business development, Jason Garland. "And the park was Green Force's. That was a pure coincidence."
The park revitalization, which began this week, is one of 12 projects that Green Force is tackling for a 13-part series that will air next April. The Percy Street project involves the donated services of landscape architect Haig Seferian, who says the objective is "to make a space that's inviting, that is what the community wants, and that it will, hopefully, take pride in maintaining and spending more time in."
Producer Corinna Lehr, whose Tricon Films & Television is spearheading the makeover, calls the Percy Street park "the ultimate community front yard."
She discovered it after Al Rezoski from the City of Toronto's Clean and Beautiful program took her on a walkabout in search of spaces to revitalize.
"Originally, I saw the opportunity for restoration. But what came through very clear and was key to us getting involved was the sense of community that exists here. This street is a very tight street. It's very involved. They have their own community centre -- it's the street."
And so the neighbours, naturally, have been very involved in the planning process, producing what Mr. Seferian calls "pages and pages of wish lists," as to what they want to see -- and experience -- in the park.
Ms. Wilkey says the Green Force initiative gave the residents "the opportunity to really 'blue-sky' . . . We started thinking that it would also be great to have a gathering place in the park -- a place where we could hang out or have a street BBQ, in addition to transforming it into something more lush and loved."
Easier said than done. Ms. Lehr calls the park a "very challenging space," citing the need for lots of lighting, "so there are no dark corners for illicit activities," and the problem of salt spray spilling off the Adelaide Street extension in winter.
The plan for the new garden, which is expected to be completed next week, includes the planting of 12 maples and one white fir, three spruce and one hemlock, 20 yews and another 20 cedars. There will also be a communal vegetable and herb garden and, yes, a meeting place -- a large ovoid area finished with interlocking stone flanked by wood screens and a sculpture, entitled Rebirth, donated by a local artist.
"I think it's appropriate for what's about to take place in the area," Mr. Seferian offers. "It is a rebirth, of a park and of a community."
Back on Donna Johnston's stoop, the 61-year-old grandmother who has lived in two houses on Percy Street -- her father's and now her own -- is thinking about sustainability. She doesn't even understand the meaning of environmental impact: "Nope. No impact on me, whatsoever."
What she does understand is the fragrant smell of spring blossoms after a winter thaw. And she is looking forward to experiencing that in the neighbourhood's new garden.
"It will look nice when they fix it up," she says. "I think it will make everything look so pretty."
But more than that, Streetcar's Jason Garland says the Percy Street makeover will energize a long-neglected corner of Toronto that has a rich and multifaceted history.
"We're not looking to be urban titans," he says. "We're looking to be urban heroes to our communities. In 10 years' time, we're hoping to drive through this community and feel really good about what we did."
