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Yonge Street Revitalization (Downtown Yonge BIA/City of Toronto)

This is the section of Yonge Street that every tourist visits. Today alone, I had three tourists ask me for directions to Dundas Square.

We should absolutely be making this strip more attractive to them, in order to encourage future visits and investment.

Seeing as how this corridor is primarily a pedestrian one, and that the retail/entertainment experience of the zone is defined by it's pedestrian experience (the hustle, the bustle, the crowds, the ranting preacher, etc.), it is entirely appropriate to adopt a pedestrian-focused plan.
 
What i loved about the consultation was a restaurant owner who said "I don’t know anybody who dines at a high-end restaurant who comes by foot".
How about the thousand of people who live in downtown.
 
imperfect said:
If our dear Councillor Wong-Tam (of QAIA sponsorship fame) really wanted to something useful for this strip of Yonge she can start with the EVERGREEN facility for street people - but she never will attempt to do anything with this gathering place for thugs and punks - remember she (like many here) is a bleeding heart die hard NDP version socialist and the EVERGREEN people have been there (and own the building) since way back - the 30's methinks.
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Absolutely pathetic. If this is your attitude toward urbanism then I suggest you move to some gated subdivision in Florida somewhere. Toronto's city motto "Diversity, Our Strength" doesn't mean you can get sushi and falafel on the same block. It means, among other things, that we do not remove people from our neighbourhoods based on class, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, or any other aspect of their identity. If you can't stand to be in the same area as those you deem to be "undesirables" then you are free to leave.
 
The Yonge Street mission has owned this building since 1904. It's one hundred and seven years old. Which makes it just thirty-seven years younger than Canada itself. That's a substantial number of governments to have weathered.
Actually, until I looked these numbers up, I didn't realize what a strand of history that place is.
 
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For city builders, there’s a new model in town


Jul. 09, 2011

By SIRI AGRELL

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Read More: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...own/article2091871/singlepage/#articlecontent


At a meeting at City Hall earlier this year, rookie councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam asked for the money to fund a new vision for a stagnant strip of Yonge Street between Dundas and Gerrard. She had been representing Ward 27 for less than two months at the time of the January tête-à-tête, but the group she asked for money did not include the city’s new mayor, Rob Ford, or any of her fellow council members. Seated at the table were members of the Downtown Yonge BIA, the administration of the Yonge Street Mission and Ryerson University, and Yonge Street property owners Ken Rutherford, Arron Barberian and the Lalani family.

- On Wednesday, she unveiled the result of her efforts: a bold Yonge Street master plan created by urban planner Ken Greenberg and the architecture firm KPMB, which was paid for entirely by the private sector. In a time when the city’s mayor has made his distaste for spending public money abundantly clear, she has also demonstrated a new model for Toronto urban planning, one that takes City Hall almost entirely out of the equation. And she may be playing right into Rob Ford’s hands. Ms. Wong-Tam’s proposal comes just months after the completion of a beautified Bloor Street, a $24-million makeover that was paid for by local businesses.

- Across the city, neighbourhoods seeking similar improvements are doing an end-run around the Ford administration, funding their own planning documents and approaching other levels of government for support. A $50-million project aimed at revitalizing John Street has already seen about $10-million designated by the city from Section 37 public-realm enhancements collected from the area’s developers. The Entertainment District BIA is talking with the provincial ministry of culture and tourism as well as the federal government in an effort to solicit the rest, and one of the planners involved said they don’t expect the city to cough up another cent.

- “The fact of the matter is that the city is not taking this kind of project on, they’re not doing these visioning strategies and they don’t have the resources or the staff or the time,” said urban planner Harold Madi. “So the BIAs can either sit back and suffer, or they can do something about it.Al Rezoski is the city’s acting manager of community planning, downtown section, which has only eight planners on staff to deal with an unprecedented degree “I think people are correct that we often don’t have the resources or the staff to devote to these projects,” he said. “We don’t always have the ability to do things in house.”

.....
 
Thanos said:
What i loved about the consultation was a restaurant owner who said "I don’t know anybody who dines at a high-end restaurant who comes by foot".
How about the thousand of people who live in downtown.
Click to expand...

Well, he's lost my business...I won't 'knowingly' support - directly or indirectly, that kind of ignorance... :) And since I'm only about a 7 minute walk from his place, it looks like I'm not part of his target 'market' anyway, as I wouldn't be driving to get there... ;) Besides, a cooworker who pride himself on being quite a food person went there recently and advised me not to go as it's definitlely NOT the best place to get a good steak in this city.
 
Danielinthecity said:
Well, he's lost my business...I won't 'knowingly' support - directly or indirectly, that kind of ignorance... :) And since I'm only about a 7 minute walk from his place, it looks like I'm not part of his target 'market' anyway, as I wouldn't be driving to get there... ;) Besides, a cooworker who pride himself on being quite a food person went there recently and advised me not to go as it's definitlely NOT the best place to get a good steak in this city.
Click to expand...

I don't want to patronize any business that holds such views or serves an inferior product, either. What's the name of the restaurant?
 
Thanos said:
What i loved about the consultation was a restaurant owner who said "I don’t know anybody who dines at a high-end restaurant who comes by foot".
How about the thousand of people who live in downtown.
Click to expand...

Old attitudes die hard. This is at least partly generational, but I still think it would take a special kind of willful blindness to be able to ignore the vast amounts of money currently sloshing around downtown Toronto.
 
Danielinthecity said:
Well, he's lost my business...I won't 'knowingly' support - directly or indirectly, that kind of ignorance... :) And since I'm only about a 7 minute walk from his place, it looks like I'm not part of his target 'market' anyway, as I wouldn't be driving to get there... ;) Besides, a cooworker who pride himself on being quite a food person went there recently and advised me not to go as it's definitlely NOT the best place to get a good steak in this city.
Click to expand...

This restaurant owner has an interesting PoV... I moved to within a 5 minute walk of the restaurant a year ago and have been averaging going there around once a month and regularly spend anywhere from $200 - $400 in a sitting for a party of 2. My monthly "dining out" tab has been averaging over $1k a month (aka I go to other fine establishments as well). Except on occassion, I've been getting myself around on foot since moving dt, except in bad weather when I will take a cab. I leave my car in the garage.

I can't support ignorance like that either... Luckily, there are other great steakhouses that I can walk to.

Regardless, even if this particular owner thinks everyone who dines at his high-end restaurant gets there by vehicle (private or taxi), his dependency on traffic capacity is minimal, and hence, should probably not factor in much into traffic capacity decision-making (as compared to say the needs of a 70+ storey condo, or a very large urban mall)... And even then, we should still be looking at ways to improve pedestrian accessibility in the area and promoting and improving the public transit experience. This is beyond politics - Yonge St plays a major role for GTA residents economically, socially and to guests of the city... and it is absolutely depressing.
 
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Thanks! Definitely appreciate that! I wish the rendering and the architecture in it is a bit inspiring, but there is certainly much to recommend in that model.

AoD
 
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