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Restaurant Row Threatened

This issue isn't just about "restaurant row", a memorable but somewhat crude name. What we're dealing with is a cohesive group of heritage buildings built to similar heights and with similar architecture, accommodating different businesses and tenants. It's a solid group of buildings whose individuality and narrow facades make for an engaging and functional urban fabric. To gut this urban fabric for single developments that span across blocks will make for a more dull city aesthetically and in terms of building uses. Obviously, heritage architecture will disappear. I see such proposals as undesirable. If development is going to happen the way it did in the 1960s with blocks cleared of heritage buildings and the traditional fabric of the city torn apart with the exception of a few retained facades, then we'll probably need the kinds of aggressive restrictions that came in the 1970s to preserve the great things that we have.
 
junctionist said:
This issue isn't just about "restaurant row", a memorable but somewhat crude name. What we're dealing with is a cohesive group of heritage buildings built to similar heights and with similar architecture, accommodating different businesses and tenants. It's a solid group of buildings whose individuality and narrow facades make for an engaging and functional urban fabric. To gut this urban fabric for single developments that span across blocks will make for a more dull city aesthetically and in terms of building uses. Obviously, heritage architecture will disappear. I see such proposals as undesirable. If development is going to happen the way it did in the 1960s with blocks cleared of heritage buildings and the traditional fabric of the city torn apart with the exception of a few retained facades, then we'll probably need the kinds of aggressive restrictions that came in the 1970s to preserve the great things that we have.
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Thank you, a voice of reason. I'm seeing people painted as anti-development, anti-architecture, anti-urban, anti-density...just for simply desiring that King Street's (and Toronto's) historic fabric is retained. The historic architecture and mixed-use zoning is the reason why the "Two Kings" has spurred $Billions worth of development.
 
dt_toronto_geek said:
With so many more people living in the neighbourhood (and not visiting for 3 hours) the restaurants along there should do better.
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This may imply that said grouping of restaurants are either lacking in culinary creativity or just serving mediocre sustenance or priced themselves out of the market.
 
It's a solid group of buildings whose individuality and narrow facades make for an engaging and functional urban fabric.
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Well, that's the key to the success of every single high street in Toronto....the individually owned, narrow victorian commercial fronts. It generally encourages cheaper rents, which attract independent business, which are generally more "creative" in their endeavours than the chain stores that tend to inhabit large development retail frontages.


This issue isn't just about "restaurant row"
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But it's a lot about "Restaurant Row". Perhaps it's a logical conclusion for any sizeable "theatre district" to organically sprout a "restaurant row" (as in the identical situation on Broadway), but I think it is an indispensable element of a successful theatre district. Not that there aren't plenty of eating establishments located in that general area, but a restaurant row creates it's own buzz, and creating a buzz it what entertainment districts rely on. The "tourist trap" factor is fairly irrelevant...most of the "theatre" is a tourist trap as well.

So, since restaurant row has a critical synergistic relationship with the health of the whole greater "entertainment district", the city should be looking at it in those terms.

I think the city can encourage the retaining of the "Row", while allowing for increased density (condos) behind them, and by transferring density to the vacant parking lots on the block. In fact, the city should encourage the part of the block that is vacant (parking lot) facing King to be infilled with similar retail space to the existing "Row", carrying it completely to the end of the block.
 
I don't mind seeing development atop the row with proviso: 1. heritage structures must be preserved (in a manner most appropriate for the structure/context in question, either in the form of the facade, or in full) and 2. the number of storefronts facing King should not be reduced.

AoD
 
AlvinofDiaspar said:
I don't mind seeing development atop the row with proviso: 1. heritage structures must be preserved (in a manner most appropriate for the structure/context in question, either in the form of the facade, or in full) and 2. the number of storefronts facing King should not be reduced.

AoD
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this would be an ideal place to do development with similar treatments of heritage properties like the ones facing Yonge Street with 5ive
 
cdr108:

Not "really" - the restaurant row is an anomaly where the structures facing King are significantly taller. That isn't the case for the stretch of Yonge from Charles to say, Grosvenor. 5ive works simply because the tower portion is set back from the street, and that's not really want a lot of the other proposals have in mind.

AoD
 
i like the preservation/reconstruction of the 3 storey facade/streetwall, but abit confused as to why each storefront can't be the same width as the original building?
 
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