One thing that no one seems to be mentioning is that Liberty Village is full of people day and night and will be gaining another roughly 2000 citizens within the next 6 months followed by another 10000 over the coming years. Yes, there is much left to be desired with the current state of the architecture and the strip malls are hideous beyond belief and they're building another one - which shouldn't be allowed, but new bars are opening - Locus 144, the best cupcakes in the city are here, great sushi, etc. etc., while the distillery is full of overpriced, mediocre food and is empty 80% of the time. I go, on occasion, but with the exception of Soulpepper (tremendous) and chocolate, there's nothing there of interest. Way more interesting galleries are either in or very close to LV - LV even has a Balzacs.
Of course, I do agree that the Distillery is in a great up and coming area and will only benefit from all the development going on all around it and in 15 years might be incredible, but if the market slows, all of that redevelopment will too and it could take a long time for that to come to fruition. In the meantime, LV almost already has a built in community that is about 4 times larger than the distillery's and in 5 years will be almost 10 times larger. It will be very interesting to see how these people shape the community. I'm hoping for the best.
One last thing. The distillery, while many floors high in some buildings has 90% of it's stuff on the first floor - just like a strip mall. Granted, there aren't any nail salons, blockbusters or pet stores - those are 500m away on the Esplanade. Not everybody can stumble into heritage buildings.