vacant lots | as I walk Toronto

Posts Tagged ‘vacant lots’

Queen East and a little bit Eastern

Posted: September 23, 2023 in construction, doors, intersections, old buildings, stores
Tags: architecture, Bareket, buses, Consumers Gas, Curtia Wright, doors, dutch love, Eastern Ave., Elicser Elliott, fence, flowers, Gales, ghost signs, Hebrew, houses, Leslieville, Mediah, murals, Queen Street East, redevelopment, signs, stores, trucks, vacant lots, welcome, Welcome Back to Main Street

These are some of the photos that I took the last time that I walked along Queen Street East – with a diversion or two down to Eastern Avenue. It was a wander around parts of the Leslieville and Riverside neighbourhoods. In no particular order….

below: Leslieville mural painted by Elicser Elliott, Queen Street East

below: Queen Street shops

below: Hebrew letters, part of a project called “Welcome Back to Main Street” from back in 2021. The Riverside Neighbourhood and Leslieville BIA collaborated with STEPS Public Art as part of the I HeART Main Street Challenge. The painting was done by local artists Bareket and Curtia Wright

below: … and nearby, “welcome” in Polish, witamy.

below: At 744 Queen East, the old white Bank of Commerce building with its bowed front facade, dates from 1905. The architects who designed the building were Darling & Pearson who were responsible for a number of bank buildings in Toronto and other Canadian cities.

below: Blessed Love Caribbean Grocery and Take Out.

below: A frenzied backdrop to a sidewalk patio.

below: Ghost sign at Queen and Coady.

below: More details from the past trying to hold on. The “blue box” has obliterated the old gabled roof structure that has probably been there for more than 100 years.

below: Canadian flag motifs on planters

below: Strange ducks on posters, a form of graffiti? Or just weirdness?

below: Sax player at the Duke

below: Mediah on Queen

below: on Broadview

below: Gales Snack Bar, Eastern and Carlaw.

below: Old row houses on Eastern – 4 in a row, 3 blue but 545 is in its original brown.

below: Something else that is old – an old style bus shelter close to an old metal Queen Street street sign affixed to the brick building.

below: And one last “you don’t see many of these anymore” – old parking meters. Anyone got coins?

below: Snapdragons

below: Lilies and hostas

below: More flowers, and a baby pram too. Did you know that pram is just a short form of perambulator? How British is that! Even better, the second meaning of perambulator is, “a person who walks, especially for pleasure and in a leisurely way.”

below: More than flowers!

below: Perambulating on Queen West!

below: Traffic on Eastern Ave, headed downtown.

below: No trespassing sign on one of the many vacant lots on the south side of Eastern.

below: This is one of the vacant lots on Eastern; it’s just west of Leslie. The containers are offices (?) for GM as in General Motors. They are sitting on a seven acre site that is otherwise empty. Starting back in 2016 there was talk that this site would be developed as a GM Mobility Campus but approval from the city was never granted. The previous buildings (film studios) were demolished and the lot lies vacant.

below: Another space is for storage of old buses and trucks, movie props and other remnants of film productions.

below: … which happened to be unlocked the day I walked past.

below: On Leslie Street, at Eastern, this whole building is for lease because….

below: .. as the letter states, the last tenant was locked out. They abandoned the premises leaving behind more than $100,000 in rent owing to the landlord.

below: The former Consumers Gas Company (now part of Enbridge) has had a large presence on Eastern Avenue for many years. This stone on the exterior of the building names all the Consumers Gas directors in 1907 (presumably when the building was built?). J.L. Blaikie was the president and A.W. Austin was the vice-president. The mayor of the city, E. Coatsworth, was also a director. There was a Sir W. Mortimer Clark on the list and, to no one’s surprise, the other names were all very anglo.

below: Queen West at the CNR tracks

below: Little red picket fence

below: Renovations

below: Note the many hydro meters all in a row – six units in what was once a single family home.

below: So far so good

below: Nice

below: You never know what you will find written on the concrete.

below: In memory of Karolina Huebner-Makurat who died on a Friday afternoon in August because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was caught in the crossfire during an altercation outside a supervised injection site. Senseless. Horrible.

Stay safe.

Bayview intensification

Posted: January 21, 2023 in construction, locations, old buildings
Tags: Bayview Ave., bungalows, demolition, development notices, fence, houses, North York, residential, vacant lots

The temperatures this January have been warmer than usual but that means more grey skies and dreary weather days. I spent one of those grey afternoons in the fog on a stretch of Bayview Avenue near York Mills Road. It seemed like an appropriate time to see how many abandoned houses I could find.

Once upon a time, and not that long ago, Bayview Avenue in this part of the city was lined with large houses on big lots, often hidden behind trees. Slowly, each house is being replaced with 4 to 6 townhouses in line with a revised city plan. Toronto has many housing issues including a shortage of family homes.

below: Five years ago I posted a photo of this house in a post about empty Bayview houses. It was empty at the time too.

below: This house appeared in the same 2017 post. At that time it still had a red front door.

below: Development is rarely a quick process and things can often get convoluted – the sign on this property is for one of the newest plans – it was filed in 2022. There are websites advertising the 4 townhouses at 2621 Bayview for sale preconstruction. There is also a website that claims that 2621 Bayview is included in a block, 2617-21 Bayview that is/was for sale for $14,800,000. (MLS number C5438385).

below: This is 2019 Bayview, included in the 2017-21 block. At 14.8 million just for the land to get 11 units….. Toronto may have a shortage of units but it also has a shortage of affordable housing. What price is affordable these days? A quick search of properties for sale on Bayview shows that a vacant lot is priced above $4,000,000 (1/2 an acre) and that a newly built townhouse with 3000+ square feet is above $2,000,000.

below: Another house that has sat empty.

below: With an application filed in 2017. Five years. Is the process that slow? The city wants this intensification to happen and there doesn’t seem to be a lack of potential developers circling like vultures. Does a backlog of files that are 5, 6, or more years in the making suggest a flaw in the system somewhere?

below: Preparations for a new access road/driveway have begun where 2673 and 2675 Bayview once stood.

Walking Kennedy Road

Posted: September 14, 2021 in intersections, locations
Tags: bakery, commercial, construction, furniture, Grace church, Habib Canadian bank, magical aquarium club, mattress, moose, mount Zion Church, mullitcultural, redevelopment, restaurant, Scarborough, signs, stores, streets, vacant lots

Sometimes it’s difficult to remember that Toronto includes a large number of outlying areas, not just the downtown core. Also, if you are looking for a “safe” place to walk during these Covid times, head to Kennedy Road in Scarborough. I wasn’t alone the day I walked it but people were few and far between. Out Scarborough way they aren’t as used to people wandering around with cameras so I got a few quizzical, skeptical looks. The street scene is definitely different from the central core but every street has a story to tell. Sometimes you just have to slow down and look for it.

below: What lured me into the area? I caught a glimpse of this moose and it made me want to explore more. It stands beside Kennedy Road, just south of the 401. Back in 2000 there were 326 of these sculptures scattered around the city, all were the identical moose shapes but all were painted differently. Collectively, they were “Moose in the City”.

You might have noticed that the sign also says Mike Myers Way, named for the actor who grew up in Scarborough. I am not sure if this means that all of Kennedy Road is named after him but there is a Mike Myers Drive just to the south of this (south of Lawrence).

below: The sign on the Elite Bakery is trilingual – Greek, English, and another in an alphabet that I don’t recognize (Arabic?). It all looks good in any language, doesn’t it?

below: More signs of the multicultural nature of Toronto

below: Another common Toronto feature – the construction site! … with its plethora of safety rules and regulations.

below: Looking west on Eglinton at Kennedy. That is one tall utility pole!

below: Magical Aquarium Club

below: Grace Church and Grace Place Food Bank

below: Mount Zion Church, The Apostle Doctrine of God

below: Bright pink and red will make your business stand out!

below: A faded photo above the entrance to a furniture store – highlighting their wares. She seems like a very satisfied customer!

below: Or, show your product by having it on display outside (these are Covid times after all)

below: Jostling to be seen, a jumble of words and colours.

below: Eye exams on site… but the I (eye?) fell over. Carpets & Rugs, Kairali Indian cuisine – lunch buffet for an unknown price.

below: Real Kerala groceries at Motherland Foods. Mr. John’s take out.

below: The two storey brick plaza. Many of these were built around the suburban areas, back when suburbs were newer and growing quickly in the 1950s and 1960s.

below: It seems fitting that the Private Eye and Spy Shop is close to the Adult Movies store. You can also eat at Lucile’s West Indian Restaurant and Groceries or at Just Love Caribbean Restaurant.

below: Agincourt Used Cars, closed and waiting for redevelopment – into townhouse like complex with retail on the ground floor facing the street (in one proposal from December 2015 anyhow. There are 25 documents associated with this development, all available online. The latest one was March 2018. I didn’t read them.)