More than a decade ago, as gentrification pushed Toronto’s grassroots arts community out of the once-decrepit Queen and Spadina area, it picked up and moved farther west, past the mental hospital, to the Triangle, an abandoned industrial area south of Queen between Dovercourt and Dufferin. At the time, it was the kind of place you moved to only if you wanted to be left alone—an ugly, forgettable stretch bordering on Parkdale, where no one ever seemed to get on or off the streetcar. Inevitably, in the wake of these urban pioneers came others, creeping ever westward: art galleries like Stephen Bulger, restaurants like Swan and Bar One, and, in 2004, the Drake Hotel, which became a social hub and turned Queen West West into a destination in its own right.

Suddenly, the Queen West Triangle was the epicentre of the city’s cultural buzz, and everyone wanted a piece of it. Starbucks (which was briefly graffitied with the message, “Drake, you ho—this is all your fault!”) came to Queen and Dovercourt, followed soon after by three developers in mid-2005 who, in rapid succession, applied to build high-rise condominiums. One of them was to be called Bohemian Embassy, a shameless attempt to usurp the neighbourhood’s artistic vitality as a lifestyle brand.

In response, community members created Active 18 (so named for the area’s municipal moniker, Ward 18–Davenport), which favoured intensification but sought to preserve the Triangle’s unique character. The group organized well and quickly, and counted among its supporters internationally renowned urban planner Ken Greenberg and arts-minded developers Margie and Christina Zeidler, the main movers behind the transformation of the Gladstone from flophouse relic to chic gallery-hotel. While all three condo proposals were considered inappropriate, much of the discussion centred on the 120-year-old former lamp factory at 48 Abell Street, where many artists had set up their studio homes, and whose owner proposed its demolition.

As the weeks and months passed, both Active 18 and the developers became frustrated by what they saw as city hall’s inaction on the file. Eventually, the developers took their case to the Ontario Municipal Board, the much loathed, Queen’s Park–appointed tribunal that has the final say on all development disputes in the province. On January 10, after 35 days of arguments and evidence, the OMB ruled in favour of the condos—to the outrage of artists’ groups, local residents, city officials and many sage observers.

In the days and weeks that followed, a growing chorus of anger, led by the Toronto Star’s Christopher Hume, demanded the province rein in the OMB and give Toronto the power to make its own planning decisions. In February, Mayor David Miller announced that the city would contest the decision by all available means. By focusing public outrage squarely on the OMB and putting Queen’s Park on the defensive, Miller managed to deflect attention from a bigger problem: the vast, toxic malaise that currently afflicts the city’s interactions not just with the OMB, but with developers, residents and its own planning department. These relationships form a sort of polygamous marriage, and the Queen West Triangle has become a multipartite divorce proceeding. As with all relationship breakdowns, there’s a whole sordid history behind it, lots of recrimination in every direction and more than enough blame to go around. And the artists are the kids caught in the middle.