Sitting in the parking lot of Mongomery’s Inn “Etobicoke’s Museum” on the banks of the mighty Mimico Creek at Islington and Dundas. The Union Jack is flying, there is a Sunoco across the street and behind the inn there are a bunch of old(er) folks wearing very white uniforms (some kind of hybrid short-pants-very-high-waist get-up) playing lawn bowling. We’re at the top of a suburb that streaches down to Bloor, full of nice houses with big lawns. It’s a very Happy Days kind of suburb — built when suburbs were not all cookie cutter, and the scale didn’t sprawl forever. I can see garages with rooms over them where rogue Fonzes are probably making out with Etobicoke’s daughters (and some of the sons) right now.
I just went for a walk up Dundas to find something to eat and found Islington Village, a cute little streach of retail and mixed up restaurants, bordered by a bunch of high rise condo’s that Brendan, who’s working in the Airstream today, says is a vertical “Little Poland”. Even out here, in the land of Gloria Lindsay Luby, there’s that nice Toronto mix of single family homes next to big highrises, like in the Annex, but with more Sunocos (and some other details). Most importantly, there is Second Cup out there. Espresso machines and Wifi are key signs of civilization, and Islington Village has them all.
However, I just interviewed 101 year old Pete and his daughter Judy, and she was saying that a new condo being built at Six Points is replacing the plaza and grocery store that was there. “What kind of planning doesn’t plan for grocery stores.” The closest is a few kilometers east on Dundas, towards Little Malta. She also mentioned the hardware store on Dundas (Pete taught the “boys” who ran it at Etobicoke Collegiate, where he did Physics and Phys-Ed) just shut down, as they couldn’t afford the new rents, so now a deli is going in — and one of the “boys” is in the hospital now, after having a heart attack because of the stress.
What is most compelling, I think, is that people in all corners of this city care about how development takes place, and there are little battles being fought everywhere.
4 comments
Yeah, it’s either No Frills across from Cloverdale, the Loblaws at Scarlett, or Bruno’s at Royal York.
Not terribly practical when you consider that the Lambton bus runs every 20 at rush hour, every 30 other times.
Never mind. I forgot the Rabba’s just west of Islington. Oops.
I was told Rabba doesn’t count because it’s too expensive. So it can’t be relied upon as a “regular” grocery store.
I was told that there was an incentive in place from the city for the developer (Concert) to attract a grocery store to the condo site you speak of. However no grocery chain will build a store on the site since it will not include a big sprawling parking lot. The first floor of the building will include retail space and most likely a grocery store just not a large scale store as planned. Seems the grocery chains are only interested in big box stores.
Regardless there is still a chance that this development by concert could really benefit the area by improving the streetscape around the site and bringing some kind of grocery store to the area. The buildings will all front right on to either Dundas or Bloor and that is a good thing rather than the sub-divison like condos that have taken up too much space in the past.