Toronto Illegal Parking Ticket Fees Increasing 150%

Illegal parking in Toronto will cost you two-and-a-half times more dough as of Friday.

The City of Toronto officially increases the penalty for parking or leaving a motor vehicle on municipal property without consent on December 1.

Those caught parking without a permit on City property will have to pay $75 per infraction, a 150 per cent increase from the previous $30 amount.

A parking ticket fee hike was recommended by Transportation Services in September, urging city council to increase fines to "encourage compliance in purchasing a ticket to park on municipal/private property and discourage the illegal practice of parking or leaving a vehicle on public/private property without consent."

In short, the City believes it can incentivize paid parking by increasing fines for illegal parking, stating that the new fees "better align the penalty amounts relative to parking rates."

That September recommendation to raise fees noted "many instances where motor vehicle owners will park in a municipal or private parking facility and decide that, rather than paying the posted parking rates at a parking kiosk, they would prefer taking their chances with incurring a parking violation notice or avoid a parking violation notice altogether."

"The reason why drivers risk being issued a parking violation notice is because most times the penalty amount is less than what they would be required to pay for parking," the report argued.

More than doubling the penalty is expected to not just cut down on illegal parking, but put additional money in City coffers through higher fees and incentivized paid parking.

The move comes after a report found over 200,000 tickets issued in 2021 and 2022 combined for illegally parking on municipal lots, and almost 700,000 tickets issued for illegally parking in paid lots during the same period.

Please share this

Toronto Maple Leaf and Toronto Raptors Beer Prices

If you were hoping for a cheap drink somewhere in the city, it doesn't appear that you'll find one at a Toronto Maple Leafs or Toronto Raptors game this season.

With both teams now seeing their season in full swing, the prices for beer and liquor at Scotiabank Arena have gone up slightly since last season. In most cases, the price of a standard drink has increased between 50 and 75 cents for a given size at a Leafs or Raptors game.

The cheapest drink you can find is a tall can of either Coors Light, Miller Lite, or Molson Canadian, setting you back $13 per can. That's a $10.10 markup from the LCBO, where a can of any of those three will cost you $2.90 a pop.

Interestingly, the arena converted its draught cup sizes from 20 oz and 28 oz to 625 ml and 725 ml, registering at about 21 and 24 oz, respectively.

Leafs beer prices, 2023-24

 

	20 oz (2022)	28 oz (2022)	Tall Can (2022)	625 ml (2023)	725 ml (2023)	Tall Can (2023)
Coors Light	$13.50	$17.00	$12.25	$14.25	$17.25	$13.00
Coors Original	$14.25	$17.75	$13.25	$15.00	$18.00	$14.00
Molson Canadian	$13.50	$17.00	$12.25	$14.25	$17.25	$13.00
Blue Moon	$14.25	$17.75	$13.25	$15.00	$18.00	$14.00
Hop Valley	$14.25	$17.75	$13.25	$15.00	$18.00	$14.00
Creemore Lager	$14.25	$17.75	$13.25	$15.00	$18.00	$14.00
Creemore Pilsner	N/A	N/A	$13.25	N/A	N/A	$14.00
Creemore IPA	N/A	N/A	$13.25	$15.00	$18.00	$14.00
Creemore Pale Ale	N/A	N/A	$13.25	N/A	N/A	$14.00
Arizona Hard Iced Tea	N/A	N/A	$13.50	N/A	N/A	$14.00
Sol	N/A	N/A	$13.25	N/A	N/A	$14.00
Heineken	N/A	N/A	$13.75	N/A	N/A	$14.50
Strongbow Cider	N/A	N/A	$13.75	N/A	N/A	$14.50
Vizzy	N/A	N/A	$13.50	N/A	N/A	$14.00
Rickard's Red	N/A	N/A	$13.25	N/A	N/A	$14.00
Miller Lite	N/A	N/A	$12.25	N/A	N/A	$13.00
Simply Spiked	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	$13.50
Smirnoff Ice	N/A	N/A	$13.50	N/A	N/A	$14.00
Glutenberg Blonde	N/A	N/A	$13.75	N/A	N/A	$14.50
Non-Alcoholic	N/A	N/A	$8.00	N/A	N/A	$8.00

Liquor prices

• Premium – 1 oz, $13; 2 oz $24
• Deluxe – 1 oz, $13.50; 2 oz $24.50
• Ultra-Premium – 1 oz, $14; 2 oz, $26.00
• Don Julio Blanco Tequila – 1 oz, $17.50; 2 oz, $33
• House Wine – 6 oz, $14.50; 9 oz, $20
• Premium Wine – 6 oz $16.50; 9 oz $23

These numbers were all pulled this month from a stand at the 300-level at Scotiabank Arena.

Please share this

Toronto Home Prices Expected toDecline Further In 2024

Given the jarring sluggishness of Toronto's real estate market in recent months, residents and realtors alike are wondering what next year will hold for the city's housing landscape.

Housing forecasts for the region have been a little all over the place and, of course, hinge on whether mortgage lending rates will fall.

But, new predictions from RE/MAX contradict others from competitors, promising lower prices for the region in the New Year, rather than the stubbornly high figures we've seen persist despite the market downturn.

In a very mixed bag of projections, the real estate company is anticipating that the cost of the typical home in the GTA will fall by about three per cent in 2024. The same can also be said of Peterborough, while property in Durham Region and Grand Bend will see even more substantial price dips of about five per cent.

For notoriously red-hot Toronto, this, along with other factors — like increasing numbers of terminated listings, incidents of power of sale and days on market — will mean more of a buyer's market at times in the coming year, which is a rarity for the region.

RE/MAX predicts lower real estate prices but more sales in the GTA next year in its latest market outlook.

"Despite various markets in Ontario favouring sellers or experiencing balanced conditions in 2023, the majority of regions are currently buyers’ markets including Niagara, Mississauga, Durham Region, Brampton, Grand Bend, North Bay, Muskoka, Haliburton and Kingston," the outlook, released Tuesday, reads.

"Looking ahead to next year, Mississauga, Brampton, Simcoe County, Muskoka and Haliburton are likely to balance out. The GTA market is also anticipated to gain balance in 2024, but is also expected to favour buyers at certain points of the year."

Particularly interesting is the fact that the Toronto area, almost always among the top two priciest places for real estate in the country, is slated to see price declines while the opposite can be said for Canada at large, with prices rising about 0.5 per cent nationally next year alongside a spike in market activity.

"Looking ahead, RE/MAX brokers and agents expects the market to be slightly more active in 2024, with national average residential sale prices likely to increase by 0.5 per cent and 61 per cent of regions surveying anticipating unit sales to increase in 2024, RE/MAX notes.

"The slower market we’ve been experiencing across the country this fall could be an early indicator of an active 2024, as reflected in the modest price increase and sales outlook for next year, and the balancing of conditions in several regions across the country."

This is thanks to the fact that nearly three-quarters of Canadians still somehow perceive home ownership to be "the best investment" of any despite our lasting housing shortage and what the firm terms "a tricky interest rate environment" that will, along with a high cost of living, continue to impact the housing market.

Please share this

Toronto Residents To Pay More For Services Like Water and Garbage

Toronto residents may soon have to shell out more money for basic City services like water and garbage collection.

The City announced on Tuesday that it has proposed temporary "moderate raises" of three per cent in the price of water and solid waste management services in the interim.

Once approved, these interim rates are planned to take effect on New Year's Day, 2024, and will remain in place until the City's 2024 rate-supported operating and capital budgets are considered by council next February.

An interim rate hike has been pitched as a means to allow Solid Waste Management Services and Toronto Water to continue operating at full service levels and plan for future investment. The City claims this measure will help avoid larger rate hikes when a final budget is approved next year.

So how much will you have to pay for these basic services in January?

Solid waste collection is priced based on the size of garbage bins, meaning some residents pay more than others for their garbage pickup.

After the three per cent increase, the annual 2024 rate for solid waste collection for a single-family household will be $295.29 for a small bin (an increase of $8.60), $358.47 for a medium bin (up by $10.44), $486.86 for a large bin ($14.18 more than 2023) and $564.71 for an extra-large bin (an increase of $16.45).

As for the water bill, the average Toronto household using 230 cubic metres of water per year would be charged an additional $30 annually under the three per cent rate hike, or eight cents per day, totalling $1,039 in 2024.

Mayor Olivia Chow said in a statement that "the suggested interim rate and user fees fee maintain affordability for Toronto residents and businesses while maintaining these essential services."

Chow also reminded the public that "resident input plays a vital role in shaping these decisions, and I encourage Toronto residents and businesses to contribute their feedback."

The City's Executive Committee will consider these interim rate hikes at its upcoming meeting on December 5, and will be voted on by City Council during its upcoming meeting planned for December 13 through 15.

Rates would go into effect on January 1, 2024, if approved, and will remain until final rates are worked out during the 2024 budget process launching on January 10.

The announcement that residents will have to pay more for basic services comes the day after Mayor Chow and Premier Ford inked a new deal that promises $7.6 billion in benefits for Toronto.

Please share this

New Condo Prices in Toronto Have Dropped By Double Digits and Developers Are Worried

It's no wonder why home sales in and around Toronto have been tanking for months, but stakeholders are growing increasingly concerned with the snowballing impacts of a lack of market activity.

Inflated interest rates, an outrageously high cost of living and a floundering economy have pushed even the usual players (read: investors) far away from the real estate game, and it looks like it may finally be causing prices to drop for some housing types.

As the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) notes in its latest report, sales remained low through last month, with seven per cent fewer new homes sold compared to the same time last year, marking a 50 per cent drop from our hot market's 10-year average.

These figures from the association of home builders and land developers are led by a drastic drop in new condo sales, with 20 per cent fewer sold in October 2023 than in October 2022 and the bleakest sales figures in 10 years.

As the group notes, while these dwindling sales in an already troubled market may seem like good news to would-be buyers, they will inevitably lead to delays in adding much-needed housing supply to the region, which is indeed already happening.

While some builders are giving away literal gold to attract buyers, dozens of new condo complexes that were on the way this year have been deferred, with the wealthy companies funding them "unable to make an economic case for proceeding in the current market."

"The impacts of slower sales will be lower future housing starts. The sooner the market gets indications that more moderate interest rates are on the horizon, the sooner we will see more added housing supply," BILD writes.

With tens of thousands fewer units coming to market than anticipated while immigration and thus demand for everything continues to boom, prices will end up higher even if they are easing slightly in the economically unstable meantime.

And easing, they are, at least when it comes to new condos in the GTA — according to BILD's latest data, the average benchmark price for these units just dropped 10.8 per cent year-over-year in October.

But even amid this trend and such low interest from buyers, the average price for a new condo is still a shockingly high $1,023,102, which BILD says will only get worse in this inflationary environment.

"The housing affordability crisis in the GTA has been driven by the lack of housing supply in the face of perennially strong demand," it wrote last month, noting the province's goal to build 1.5 million additional homes by 2031.

To the average citizen, though, this can feel like a no-win situation where owning a home in one's home city is forever out of reach: if buyers are eager, prices get driven up, especially if those buyers are investors, as they often are in the GTA.

And on the flipside, if investors and other buyers are sidelined, wealthy developers back off from new builds, and the resulting lower supply leads to the same end.

Luckily in the case of resale homes, the current lack of market attractiveness has meant a shift into more of a buyers' territory, where sellers are desperate and listings are plentiful: last month had 50 per cent more active listings than October 2022, per the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB), but 5.8 per cent lower sales volumes.

Please share this

Investors now own more than 50% of Toronto’s new condos — and experts say they’re driving up housing prices for everyone

How a heady mix of privatization, ineffective rent control and cheap capital fuelled an investment boom that made Toronto housing unaffordable for regular families.

Jaqueline Belardi doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to afford a home even though she earns a good salary. Belardi and her partner make a combined income of more than $180,000, but saving up enough money for a down payment feels out of reach.

“We can’t just borrow $50,000 from our parents,” she said. “That seems like the only way younger people are able to buy property these days.”

The more rent she pays, the less she’s able to save up. The couple pay $2,750 for rent in their 1970s west-end Toronto apartment building, designed in an era of government housing that prioritized spacious units. Belardi, 35, and her partner would love to buy an apartment in the building but their mortgage costs would be double what they currently pay.

“We think maybe we’ll just rent here forever, but then you’re at the whim of your landlord,” she said. “You see some landlords own 10 properties and here we are with a good income unable to buy an apartment. People deserve to buy a home if they want to.”

Experts say real estate has become a game, where investors rather than end users are the main players, buying and selling property to cash in on Toronto’s hottest commodity. In the process, they’re driving up prices and pushing out prospective homebuyers like Belardi, who just want somewhere to live.

Investors’ hold on real estate has become hard to ignore, leading the Bank of Canada and even Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to call them out for the commodification of housing.

However, insiders say both federal and provincial governments as well as the central bank share blame in creating the conditions that allowed investors to corner 20 per cent of the market in Ontario, including 80 per cent of pre-construction condo sales and 57 per cent of newly built condos in Toronto.

The result, they say, is not only a real estate market where an income of more than $200,000 is needed to even get a seat at the table and prospective homeowners burdened by ever rising rents are unable to save up for a down payment, but also a system where investors dictate what gets built — and what doesn’t — and over-leveraged multi-property owners can weaken the overall health of the market.

From co-ops to condos

The roots of Canada’s housing crisis goes back decades, experts say, stemming from the federal government shirking responsibility for building affordable housing.

From the 1950s to 1970s, Ottawa constructed tens of thousands of nonmarket homes, said Dania Majid, a lawyer with Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario (ACTO).

But the financial crisis in the 1980s and recession in the early to mid-1990s led to austerity measures and stricter budgets, Majid said, which meant cutting back on social services and housing initiatives.

Facing substantial deficits, in 1992 the government cut the federal co-operative housing program, which had led to the construction of nearly 60,000 homes, and eventually the federal government stopped building any affordable housing.

“Unlike many European countries, Canada very early on decided the private market would be the one responsible for providing housing,” said Majid.

Condos became the main housing type to get funding from the private sector. The units were small and therefore cheaper to build, and could be sold for maximum profit.

Condos dominate

In Toronto there have been 83 purpose-built rental projects totaling 20,288 units built in the past 20 years, compared to 968 condominium projects totaling 234,535 units built over the same period.

 

In Toronto, there have been 83 purpose-built rental projects totalling 20,288 units built in the past 20 years, according to research firm Urbanation. This compares to 968 condominium projects totalling 234,535 units built over the same period.

“Condos are a relatively more affordable investment as they’re cheaper to buy and maintain compared to a single-family home,” said Marc Desormeaux, principal economist at Desjardins, noting investor demand has remained concentrated in that segment of the market.

Universal rent control ends

The housing crisis wasn’t born overnight but began decades ago when government “got out of the housing business,” said Nemoy Lewis, assistant professor at the School of Urban and Regional Planning at the Toronto Metropolitan University.

“Because of this, the private market grew and filled the void of both levels of government — federal and provincial,” said Lewis, allowing non-traditional landlords such as private equity firms, Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), asset management firms, and public pension funds to claim a greater stake in the sector.

According to Lewis’s research, from 1995 to 2022 financialized landlords accounted for 65 per cent of all multi-family dwelling units transacted in Toronto, which “coincides with a drastic jump in real estate prices for apartments,” he said.

But in the late 1990s, a pivotal moment took place that created the perfect “breeding ground” for investors, Majid said.

In 1997, former premier Mike Harris passed Bill 96, which removed rent control for units first occupied after Nov. 1, 1991.

His government also instituted new regulations that unshackled landlords from unprofitable regulatory restraints in place since the mid-’70s. Under the change, landlords would be allowed to raise rents to match market rates whenever a tenant moved out. Previously, landlords had a limit on raising rent between tenancies.

“This is what created the foundation for investors,” said Majid.

“Vacancy decontrol attracted investors to get into the market. We have this perfect storm as we get a flatline in affordable housing being built, as well as the private sector not building enough, but demand continues to skyrocket, pushing up rents and home prices.”

House prices soar

In 2010, the average home price was $430,000, according to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB), and in October 2023 it reached $1.12 million, meaning prices have skyrocketed by more than 160 per cent in just over a decade.

The rapid boom in home prices is the biggest reason for investors piling into the market, said John Pasalis, president of real estate brokerage Realosophy, and that has largely been aided by low interest rates since the 2008 financial crisis. The Bank of Canada kept the overnight lending rate below two per cent for more than a decade.

Toronto home prices soar

In just over a decade, home prices have increased by almost 60 per cent.

 

“Homes prices were steadily increasing in Toronto for years,” Pasalis said. “Before 2015, home prices were appreciating at around six per cent every year.”

But a quick acceleration in prices after 2015 led to home prices appreciating much faster. Average prices were up 33 per cent year over year in March 2017, largely due to a surge in demand from investors buying homes, primarily in the suburbs, he said. While the Bank of Canada had low rates at the time, it can’t fully account for the substantial price jump, he added.

Because prices rose quickly, more investors dove into the market, Pasalis said, wanting to reap the benefits and gain more capital.

“There was a sentiment shift during the market at that time,” he said. “It felt like the time to buy an investment property and so people piled in.”

Rent control killed again

As the market heated up, it spurred former premier Kathleen Wynne, in 2017, to implement rent control for all properties occupied on or after Nov. 1, 1991, essentially reversing Mike Harris’s policy.

But a year later, newly elected Premier Doug Ford pulled rent control for new builds saying the move would provide “incentives” for the private sector to build more housing.

He enacted legislation so that rent control would only apply to rental units created and occupied prior to Nov. 15, 2018 — meaning new buildings, additions to existing buildings and most new basement apartments that were occupied for the first time for residential purposes after this date would be exempt.

“The problem is these incentives weakened tenant protections,” Majid said. “And any new supply coming onto the market isn’t rent controlled, continuing to push prices higher.”

Cheap capital spurs investors

Since 2015, home prices have doubled in Toronto. But the biggest home price acceleration was experienced during the pandemic when the Bank of Canada lowered the overnight lending rate to 0.25 per cent for two years, making it cheap for investors to borrow money.

“In 2020, the pandemic was the biggest disaster with this worldwide health crisis shutting down the economy,” said Ron Butler, a Toronto-based mortgage broker. “But in less than 90 days the problem is fixed with government subsidies, and the real estate industry is saved by July 2020. The greatest disaster didn’t put a dent in housing, prices went up and investors think they need to buy more property.”

A lending practice that became popular during the pandemic was the home equity line of credit (HELOC) — a revolving type of secured credit with a maximum credit limit, where the collateral is the borrower’s property and it requires interest-only payments. When interest rates hit historic lows, HELOCs had interest rates below 3 per cent, Butler said, which was “unheard of” until that time.

What had typically been a lending vehicle to help with home renovations became an “influencer” in investor activity, he said, with some homeowners using the loans to pay for down-payments on other properties.

According to Statistics Canada, in February 2022 a 10-year record was broken when Canadians borrowed an additional $2 billion on HELOCs — the highest one-month increase since 2012.

There was “excessive” froth in the market, Butler said, as investors speculated and flipped properties, ramping up prices until the market reached its peak in February 2022, when the average selling price for a home hit $1.33 million.

In just three years, investors’ share of the country’s mortgaged homes rose from 20 per cent to 30 per cent, according to the Bank of Canada.

It’s an investor’s game now

Today, nearly 40 per cent of homes constructed since 2016 in Toronto are investor-owned, with investors possessing 56.7 per cent of the condos constructed in the last six years. The majority of condos built before 2016 are all predominantly owned by non-investors, according to Statistics Canada. Twenty per cent of Ontario’s homes are investor-owned.

Around 80 per cent of pre-construction condos are sold to investors as condos have proved lucrative, appreciating by hundreds of thousands of dollars in the last 15 years, Desjardin’s Desormeaux said. Because of this, they’re now driving the type of housing stock being built in Toronto, which are not designed for families in mind.

“We’re missing that midrise density, with bigger apartment units that allow for more variety of housing in the city,” he said. “We need more of that type of housing, which can be done with increased densification.”

Experts say that when investors dictate too much of the market it can create more volatility, as a large segment is at their whim. And when interest rates go up, landlords tend to off-load the higher costs to tenants, or force evictions to raise rents, TMU’s Lewis said.

As the market has cooled, investors — win or lose — are the ones still in the game. Butler said that as interest rates have soared new listings have been largely driven by over-leveraged investors who need to sell. At the same time, cash-strapped investors are still able to buy in a high-interest rate environment because they’ve managed to secure enough capital over the years, as opposed to prospective first-time buyers.

For policymakers, investors’ stronghold in the market has become too blatant to ignore.

“We do know that one of the factors that is challenging for so many people is the commodification of housing (and) the fact that people are using homes and houses as an investment vehicle — particularly corporations using homes as an investment vehicle — rather than families using them as a place to live, grow their lives and to build equity for their future,” Trudeau said in late October.

The federal government is starting to crack down on revenue streams for investors, unveiling new tax measures to remove incentives for people leasing short-term rentals and providing funds to help crack down on those not in compliance with local laws.

To ensure more homes are in the hands of end-users, housing advocates say the first legislative change needed is for the province to reinstate rent control on all properties and to have rent control between tenancies.

“Vacancy decontrol incentivizes landlords to kick out tenants to raise rent for the next tenants,” Lewis said. “We need to have rent controls in place to keep rent affordable.”

Cracking down on short-term rentals and “ghost hotels” is imperative, said Pasalis. Some economists have even said governments could outlaw Airbnb and other short-term rental platforms in big cities for five years to shore up housing while providing “some breathing room” for new builds.

“The only way to market pre-construction condos for a while was to market them as short-term rentals to make the numbers work because you could make more money per month with short-term rentals than long-term tenancies,” Pasalis said. “That certainly has contributed to price appreciation as some professional landlords have pools of short-term rental properties.”

Clamping down on home “hoardership” should also be studied, said Majid, as insurance companies such as government-owned Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corp. could refuse insurance if someone is seeking a mortgage on a 17th property.

And the federal government can build more housing and be less reliant on the private sector, she said, as the public and private sectors operate in fundamentally different ways.

“The for-profit sector needs to meet the expectations of their shareholders. Governments are responsible to the residents that they serve. Those are two different priorities,” Majid said.

“There needs to be a transformational change of how we provide and maintain housing. The government needs to build nonmarket housing like how it did before the 1990s. To look at housing not as a commodity, but as a fundamental human right.”

 

'Dead malls' in Toronto get new life as tours tap into nostalgia: 'It adds to the experience'

A Toronto man puts on tours of 'dead malls,' fuelled by his interest in anemoia — the concept of feeling nostalgia for something you never experienced.

 Once a month, Aryeh Bookbinder leads a school bus full of people on a tour of malls in and around the Greater Toronto Area. But the intention of these tours isn’t for the usual reason one might visit a mall — to shop.

Rather, the tourists will experience the ambient relics from another time: "Dead malls," as Bookbinder calls them, shopping centres with outdated or declining infrastructure, where there are more vacant storefronts than spaces occupied by businesses. Some of the malls that have been explored on past tours include Chinatown Centre in downtown Toronto, Woodbine Centre in Rexdale and High Point Mall in Mississauga.

“There are areas in it that are alive but there are areas in it that are shockingly dead,” Bookbinder tells Yahoo Canada.

Bookbinder's tours are called "Liminal Assembly" and are inspired by his interest in anemoia, a concept in which people have feelings of nostalgia for something they haven't experienced directly.

“I wanted to create something that engulfed anemoia … but take it offline,” he says.

While visiting these nearly abandoned spaces can often evoke a sense of wistfulness for a different time, it also presents the questions: How long can they be sustained, and what can we expect from them in the future?

From huge mall to something else ... eventually

In the post-pandemic recovery, changes in shopping habits and the rise of e-commerce, has led to the decline in large retailers. In the last year alone, Nordstrom shuttered all its outlets in Canada. Hudson's Bay has closed several stores across the country, including in Alberta, B.C., Quebec and Ontario. Many of these stores occupied massive spaces. One such shuttered location in Toronto occupied five floors in a prime downtown location, not exactly an easy and accessible space for just any organization to take up.

The opening-up of these spaces and others is prompting developers to re-imagine how they can be used. Currently there are plans for the land in and around several malls in Toronto to be reimagined as mixed-use developments that combine residential and commercial units, with other amenities.

But these projects take years, sometimes decades, to get off the ground. It requires planning, approval and consultation with the municipal government and, depending on the proposals, might involve rezoning.

While rebuilding plans for Toronto's Yorkdale mall have yet to break ground, they've been in place since before the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the shopping centre is far from dead, it sits on a massive parking lot. Proposals suggest plans to rebuild the lots underground and make way for a neighbourhood that could house 1,500 units within the next 20 years.

Meanwhile, Cumberland Terrace is a three-floor stretch of shops in the core of Toronto, stuck in another time. Although located in ritzy Yorkville, which is considered prime real estate, the mall has been overwhelmingly vacant for close to a decade. The site is slated for redevelopment, which would turn the mall into three high rises, though the plan has yet to be approved.
A new lease ... on a mall's life

Shauna Brail is an associate professor and director at University of Toronto’s Institute for Management & Innovation. She says there’s increasing attention to the notion of adaptive reuse — which is the building of a space for one purpose, but using it for a different purpose than intended — particularly with shopping malls.

“It creates opportunities for potential uses of malls that are no longer desirable spaces,” she says.

And those uses can be out-of-the-box.

In 2022, Citi Plaza, a multi-purpose shopping plaza in London, Ont., allowed its near-empty space to be used as a giant roller rink for several nights. The sold-out events attracted 400 people, who got to cruise around the mall on roller skates or blades.

The Cineplex theatres across from Toronto’s Eaton Centre, which were once bustling with moviegoers, have since died down. They are currently being used as lecture halls by nearby Toronto Metropolitan University during the day, and to screen films at night.
Nostalgia adds to the shopping experience

A niche interest for these vacant spaces appears to be growing, since they provide a different feeling from traditional malls, not to mention a deal on rent.

Bookbinder says there’s a renaissance from younger generations to go out of their way to visit and set up shop in deserted spaces because of their unique look and feel.

In Toronto’s Chinatown Centre, a mall that has been nearly empty for decades, Dog Park Shop, a high-end consignment store, is surrounded by empty storefronts. That appears to be part of its appeal. On the store’s Instagram page, they post photos of people modelling clothes in different parts of the eerily empty mall.

“Some entrepreneurs actually want to open shops in these spaces because they have a novelty of being nostalgic, of being of a past era of architecture and aesthetics,” Bookbinder says. “It adds to the experience of shopping there.”

The next Liminal Assembly tour explores Toronto's PATH system, a long and mostly deserted stretch of underground shops in the downtown core. The sold out event takes place on Dec. 14.

Please share this

Toronto Realtors are going Bankrupt

Please share this

The Harold Ballard Story Toronto Maple Leafs

Please share this

Fight over the fate of a North York shrine to Virgin Mary moves to city hall, 3100 Weston Rd

The city’s preservation committee voted to add the shrine’s description to a heritage listing for 3100 Weston Rd. But the shrine is dismantled and the site’s owner says it’s not coming back 

The battle over a shrine to the Virgin Mary, credited with multiple miracles before it was dismantled, has moved from a North York soccer field to city hall. 

 If worshippers and politicians keep trying to get the shrine restored, the battle could move again — to a courtroom. 

The Toronto Preservation Board heard fierce arguments Wednesday for and against the heritage value of the Marian Shrine of Gratitude, a makeshift array of statues, plaques and other religious items at 3100 Weston Rd. 

 The items started appearing in 2005 after a priest, doing yardwork behind an old mansion converted into a monastery, suffered an eye injury. He credit prayer to the Virgin Mary with quick healing and fixing his previously poor vision. 

 The shrine, on a terrace, was dismantled last August after the Winnipeg-based religious order sold the property to developer Avrance Corp. Developments, triggering nightly protest vigils by shrine devotees in an adjacent soccer field. 

City staff recommended the preservation board update a 1997 heritage listing for the site to mention the shrine, allowing it to be considered for official heritage designation. 

Devotees, supported by local councillor Anthony Perruzza and MPP Tom Rakocevic, hope a heritage designation could force the developer to restore the shrine items along with public access to the site behind the century home. 

Angie Carboni, who is spearheading efforts to get the shrine restored, told preservation board members she has taken thousands of young people there to pray and feel peace and potentially experience a miracle. 

“Many days when it rained we would pray there and the sun would come out …” Carboni said. “Money can’t buy healing, money can’t buy love, and this place is love.” 

Avrance chief executive Samuel Babarinde urged the board to disregard the shrine, saying it no longer exists and is not officially recognized by any church. He said a partner in his company, which plans to build condo and rental towers on adjacent land, will move into the old mansion and return the terrace to its original use — a large swimming pool to be periodically made available for community events. 

“We are legal owners of this property, a for-profit organization, not a religious organization, and we have no interest in continuing to host this illegal shrine on our property,” Babarinde said, adding the religious items are in storage waiting for devotees to pick them up, or he will deliver them to another site. 

If politicians care so much about a shrine, he said, “they have homes — they can put the shrine in their backyards.” 

 Mary MacDonald, the city’s senior manager of heritage planning, advised the committee to add the shrine description to the listing, noting that it doesn’t guarantee it will be a factor in any future heritage designation for the overall site. 

 “There is evidence many individuals found peace and solace,” at the shrine, she said, adding “that is an intangible heritage value, that is a sacred value that is there regardless of whether there are (religious) objects there.” 

The committee adopted the recommendation unanimously. 

Babarinde, however, later told the Star that “our heritage consultant and municipal lawyer aren’t worried about this decision, as it means absolutely nothing. 

“Our plan is to sue all parties involved in the interim. We will appeal the (heritage) designation, once finalized, to the Ontario Land Tribunal if (the designation) encompasses the shrine.” 

Please share this