Toronto Union Station Revitalization | ?m | ?s | City of Toronto | NORR

bearcat said:
I also dropped by Royal York on the weekend to try and find the other end of the tunnel. I believe it's this, but can't be certain.

View attachment 598585

On the diagram of the retail basement level, in red is roughly where the photo was taken, and in blue is an unlabeled area which I believe is the tunnel entrance.

View attachment 598586
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I can say with certainty that you are correct. That is the Royal York end of the tunnel.

The moment I saw your pictures I could tell exactly where and what it was.
 
Willybru21 said:
This is a video of what the Bay Concourse and Front Street Promenade area looked like on their final day:
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Thank you for the find!

Unfortunately looks like the "pizza shop" and the "leather shop" are already gone in this video, and the " leather shop bypass" is in place. See 0:57 in the video.
 
Woodbridge_Heights said:
Gosh I can't remember the name of that pizza place, "grab a slice"? "pizza on the go"? But yes it was definitely one or two units to the right of the commuters lounge in the photo above. It was literally a 4 foot hole in the wall that you would order slices from. I want to say it was a former leather goods/repair shop but I don't remember for sure.

A cursory search on this forum has the term "Leather Shop Bypass" first show up in 2016, and god did this community give it it's name??? I know there were dozens of photos taken prior to the GO Concourse shutting down but I haven't been able to find any of the pizza shop/leather shop bypass.

Also I can't believe this thread has been around since May of 2005. Almost 20 yrs!!!
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Could it be this place, "PIzza 2 Go"? I found an old Yelp page with one photo, and it's not really clear from the photo where in Union Station it is. Perhaps this would jog your memory.

Screenshot_20240924-125759~2.png


yelp.to

Pizza 2 Go - Toronto, ON

2 reviews of PIZZA 2 GO - CLOSED "It's cheapish.. its pizza.. its take out only in the basement of Union station. What do you expect? Well a lot really, if I were to compare it to 2 Bros pizza in NY (http://www.yelp.com/biz/2-bros-pizza-new-york). It's $3.50 for a slice of pepperoni and...
yelp.to yelp.to

Or perhaps it's a completely different pizza slice place in Union that also close down with renovations.
 
bearcat said:
Could it be this place, "PIzza 2 Go"? I found an old Yelp page with one photo, and it's not really clear from the photo where in Union Station it is. Perhaps this would jog your memory.

View attachment 598602

yelp.to

Pizza 2 Go - Toronto, ON

2 reviews of PIZZA 2 GO - CLOSED "It's cheapish.. its pizza.. its take out only in the basement of Union station. What do you expect? Well a lot really, if I were to compare it to 2 Bros pizza in NY (http://www.yelp.com/biz/2-bros-pizza-new-york). It's $3.50 for a slice of pepperoni and...
yelp.to yelp.to

Or perhaps it's a completely different pizza slice place in Union that also close down with renovations.
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That was it!!!
 
bearcat said:
I am struggling to find photos of that area from the 90's and 2000's on the internet. This was also the area where the "leather shop bypass" was more recently I think. I wonder if anyone has photos of this "leather shop" or this "pizza shop" mentioned here.

I did find a photo of the Commuters Lounge, which I think was just west of the old entrance to the tunnel to the subway and the "leather shop bypass".

https://flic.kr/p/9WwyKs

P.S. If this is too off topic for this thread, maybe somebody can point me to a more appropriate thread.
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I’ll have to look back at the disc with the other images I took that day to see if I took any other photos in the area. Will have to dig it up.

I always thought the pizza place was the entrance to the tunnel to the subway. Is that right or is it next to it?
 
APTA-2048 said:
I’ll have to look back at the disc with the other images I took that day to see if I took any other photos in the area. Will have to dig it up.

I always thought the pizza place was the entrance to the tunnel to the subway. Is that right or is it next to it?
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No I think you are correct. I believe the Pizza 2 Go location eventually became the subway access tunnel while the Bay Concourse was under construction.
 
APTA-2048 said:
I’ll have to look back at the disc with the other images I took that day to see if I took any other photos in the area. Will have to dig it up.

I always thought the pizza place was the entrance to the tunnel to the subway. Is that right or is it next to it?
Click to expand...
Okay I found this. The next store east from this photo was a dry cleaners at some point (2007).

https://flic.kr/p/7yA1vx

And a photo from 2011 from inside Commuters Lounge (on Foursquare).

Screenshot_20240924-133726~2.png
 
Richard White said:
I took this tunnel once and it was somewhat impractical.

It let you out into a random corner of the Royal York Basement and quite honestly, it would have been faster to walk out the front door of the station. It was useful at one point but I can see why it was not restored.
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I found it useful to get into the RBC building, without having to deal with the crowds of the subway, on a rainy day

Woodbridge_Heights said:
I believe that basement was some sort of retail level for the Royal York that fell into disuse
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Gosh, I haven't been in the retail level of the Royal York since the tunnel closed! But from the other photos, it looks like it's still there. Ironically I spent more time down there before I moved to Toronto - killing time while changing VIA trains at Union. Never seems any time to wander while changing to/from GO and TTC.
 
nfitz said:
I found it useful to get into the RBC building, without having to deal with the crowds of the subway, on a rainy day

Gosh, I haven't been in the retail level of the Royal York since the tunnel closed! But from the other photos, it looks like it's still there. Ironically I spent more time down there before I moved to Toronto - killing time while changing VIA trains at Union. Never seems any time to wander while changing to/from GO and TTC.
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I don't know about the retail level of the Royal York now as I haven't been through there for a long time, but it was quite depressing for a while with empty restaurants (though they may have done room service) and kitschy junk stores for tourists.
The far west end was for a time in the 2000's turned over to an office space for Rosedale Livery, which was basically a taxi company for the very high-paid financial district workers who would have standing travel instructions (ie. pick me up each day at First Canadian Place at 5:00 p.m. and take me hone), or when they would book one off travel in-town. They were all black SUVs with drivers instructed not to speak to the occupant unless spoken to. I assume that business died with Uber coming into town.
 
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Woodbridge_Heights said:
If we are correct they are one in the same. The entrance to the leather shop by pass used to be the pizza 2 go location which used to be the dry cleaners.
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So as per this National Post article from 2011 (https://nationalpost.com/posted-tor...ilers-at-union-are-asked-to-close-doors-early):

"Commuters Bar, with its brightly coloured murals of sports stars and tiled floors and walls, would be a strange fit for the glossy, mall-like environment depicted in architectural renderings of the post-renovation retail concourse.

Canada’s busiest transit hub will be losing several other mainstays. Go-Go Dry Cleaners, next door to Commuters, had been laundering riders’ clothing for about 25 years. It closed the same day as the bar. Nearby is Leather One, a store that has sold luggage and shoes in the station, its owner says, since 1983.

Across the hall was the Amuse-O-Matic, Toronto’s last pinball arcade, whose owners say it opened in 1965, and which closed on April 30."

Based on this I think the "leather shop" was "Leather One" as it's described as being nearby to Commuters. It was still open in 2011 as per the article, as was "Pizza 2 Go" as the photo on Yelp was posted in 2011.

So I think they were both open at the same time, and were not in the same location, but right beside each other.

The old tunnel to the subway was where the "Leather One" was and the pizza place was just west of there in a very narrow unit.

I attached a diagram of where I think things were located. Again, there is some guessing involved and I could be wrong here.

map.jpg



Also as per https://cptdb.ca/wiki/index.php/Toronto_Union_Station :

"Before the GO Concourse opened, a connection to the TTC's Union Subway Station was made via a tunnel through the north wall at the northeast corner near the entrance to the GO concourse, where the Leather One store entrance formerly was."
 
nfitz said:
I found it useful to get into the RBC building, without having to deal with the crowds of the subway, on a rainy day

Gosh, I haven't been in the retail level of the Royal York since the tunnel closed! But from the other photos, it looks like it's still there. Ironically I spent more time down there before I moved to Toronto - killing time while changing VIA trains at Union. Never seems any time to wander while changing to/from GO and TTC.
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I went down there recently to buy a hard copy of the Globe and Mail from the newsstand. Apparently it's really difficult to find a hard copy on Mondays now. None of the stores in the main PATH had one.
 
evandyk said:
I went down there recently to buy a hard copy of the Globe and Mail from the newsstand. Apparently it's really difficult to find a hard copy on Mondays now. None of the stores in the main PATH had one.
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Did they have one there? I'd hope the (increasingly poor) Gateway next to the Hockey Hall of Fame would have one. And I'd be very surprised if the (non-PATH) International News on the south side of Front between Church and Market didn't have it - which has one of the better magazine selections in the city.

You'd think a simple newspaper would be easy enough to find in a train station. Even in the UK it's getting harder to find somewhere with newspapers - but the one place you can count on is train stations; and I didn't have any problems finding newspapers in train stations in Paris.
 
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