scarberiankhatru
Senior Member
I think this area of Toronto is still very much in flux. It's hard to say which community will be dominant in the future or whether it will continue. By having a specific mall for each group would be a mistake. Best to just have a mall out there, and see what happens IMO.
No, it would not be a mistake...remember that the only way a Persian or Korean mini-mall would ever get built is by Persian or Korean business forces. I'm not talking about rival ethnic Yorkdales with themed cladding, just one or two larger versions of the strip malls that already exist but will eventually be eliminated by redevelopment. These business complexes (like the Persian plaza at Yonge & Centre) would be scattered by redevelopment and might not reform without an entrepreneur with some kind of ethnic mini-mall vision. The larger restaurants and food retailers, the services (lawyers and whatnot) located above them, etc., will certainly not all show up in the 500 sq.ft leased cubicles of whatever Tridel and Menkes condos that replace the sites. The Korean and Persian businesses already draw patrons from fairly long distances and don't rely solely on locals and a flashy mini-mall or two would likely be a boon for their business, for Yonge, and perhaps even for tourism, though some balance between organic authenticity and branded packaging is necessary.
It would be good if such a thing happened, but it would take a TON of expropriation for it to work. I don't know if the city has much stomech for this. And of course once we get to the railroad tracks, that's about it.
Actually, it could be done with very little expropriation, especially if the service roads follow streets like Lariviere or Dumont and don't carve new midblock paths. Besides, some expropriation is a pre-/co-requisite for any degree of redevelopment beyond a few townhouses (which would invariably trigger the creation of things like additional parkland). There won't be much redevelopment north of the rail corridor. Hilda and Henderson already cross it and connections from the service roads to these connections will likely be adequate, so it's not a big deal if the service roads don't go that far. Also, the developers would be paying for much - if not all - of the property for the service roads and adjacent parkland.
I believe there would be less opposition to high-rises in this area, if only because so many have already been planned, and because those massive apartments just south-west of Yonge/Steeles have been around for 25+ years.
There would be some token opposition to high-rises, if only because there's always token resistance to tall buildings and their inhabitants and their cars, but the real opposition might show up when the city tries to define the boundary of the 'Centerpoint/Newtonbrook Secondary Plan' or whatever it'd be called. Some property owners would want to be inside of it, some would want to stay outside of it.