Incidentally, if we want to approximate what's deceptively labelled a "Newmarket strip mall" scenario, just look at the blockfront right across from Gould (and Snohetta): virtually everything's one form or another of "mall/chain retail" (Le Chateau, American Apparel, 7-11, the Panera and Pizza Pizza bookends), and except for John Lyle's Thornton-Smith (i.e. Salad King's present home) and the Elm frontage of Pizza Pizza, nothing presently registers as "old" or "heritage". And from a raw retail/street-life perspective, that's actually a "plus", i.e. almost nothing left registers as shabby or grimy or dicey--by default, it's the most "vital" blockfront remaining here, in that 18-22 suburbanites can patronize the retail without feeling they're at risk of catching cooties. (More so than even at nearby Metropolis and Atrium on Bay, in fact--which one might justifiably argue as a case for main streets over malls.)
And yet, there's "something missing". Though that may be lost on those who want to brush off any "Yonge Street" mythos as boomer and pre-boomer nostalgic piffle that's totally lost on and irrelevant to them.
Oh, and incidentally, re the shabbiness of the Yonge Street Strip, there's another little-cited yet critical factor which may explain a lot yet would also prove extraordinarily socio-politically difficult to dislodge: the Yonge Street Mission, maybe with an assist from Covenant House nearby. (Though the kkgg school of tinpot-dictatorship urbanism might figure some way to eugenically expel or otherwise "disappear" inconvenient human eyesores such as street youth.)
