PLACES + SPACES: A lesson in the possible

Spacing contributor Laura Boudreau is blogging the Creative Places + Spaces Regional Forum at the Artscape Wychwood Barns. Follow her posts on Tuesday and Wednesday to learn more about innovative city-building at the Barns and beyond. 

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It’s not everyday that downtown Toronto sees a good old-fashioned barn raising, but it’s happening today in the Christie and St. Clair neighbourhood at the Artscape Wychwood Barns.
For years, the historic barns sat ignored and disused at 76 Wychwood Avenue. To many people in Toronto, the 4.3 acre lot was a symbol of what was wrong with Toronto city-building — the site was a city asset without a city-designated use, the industrial heritage building was in a state of abject disrepair, and the local community was alienated from its own neighbourhood space. Community members didn’t want to see the lot morph into yet another raft of sky-high condo buildings, but it wasn’t clear what the options were for redevelopment, or what kind of say the community could hope to have in the process. But very dedicated community members (hundreds of whom came out to public meetings in church basements — for years) found a champion in City Councillor Joe Mihevc, and through a partnership with Artscape, the culture-led regeneration of the Wychwood Barns began.

Today, the Artscape Wychwood Barns is a 60,000 square foot community centre that includes a host of artists’ studios, affordable housing units, and a temperate green house for urban agriculture production. It is a symbol of heritage preservation and best practices in green tech. And it’s gorgeous — as I walked around the beautiful sunlit Covered Street Barn this morning, peering into office and studio spaces, admiring the exposed brick and steel-girded skylight rooftop, I couldn’t believe that the Barns have gone from being raccoon-infested buildings on polluted land to a centre for learning, growth, change, and conflict (and more on those conflicts later today…). “It was a tangled mess of concrete and streetcar tracks, snowdrifts inside building and plants growing through the walls,” says Tim Jones, President and CEO of Artscape. “We turned intractable challenges into unstoppable ideas.”

The ideas continue to flow today, as the Barns play host to the two-day Creative Places + Spaces Regional Forum. People from across the city — and the country — are coming together to hear more about the Barns as a case study for creative spacemaking and to share the trials and tribulations creative spacemakers face. “[The Barns are] a lesson in what is possible,” says Roscoe Handford, a local resident and Artscape Board Member. “And you can apply those lessons to so many other projects out there.”