Shortly after announcing that Ted Corrado had taken over as corporate executive chef, The Drake has revealed that it will be launching Drake 150, a stand-alone restaurant downtown. Details are scarce, but the restaurant’s placeholder website drops a few hints. The new spot will apparently be located in a “postmodern office building” that used to house to a commercial bank (the site has an archival photo of the building that’s now The Bay at Queen and Yonge), and the complex will also contain a bar and a Drake General Store outpost.
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The Drake is opening a new restaurant downtown
Three Toronto property giants write a letter opposing a downtown casino (and embarrassing Paul Godfrey)
(Image: Ian McKellar)
Only a week after three former Toronto mayors penned a letter opposing the development of a casino in Toronto, three of the city’s largest commercial property firms have written their own letter against the idea of a downtown gambling den—but for very different reasons. Edward Sonshine, Michael Emory and Stephen Diamond, who head RioCan, Allied Properties and Diamond Corp., respectively, don’t oppose casinos on principle, but they say the traffic snarls that would result from putting one in the city’s core could “jeopardiz[e] the success of our downtown.” Specifically, the execs are worried about implications for the major mixed-use project they hope to develop at the foot of Spadina, a few blocks west of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre—one of the proposed casino locations (and the one with the fanciest renderings to date). For OLG chair and casino cheerleader Paul Godfrey, the letter is a downer twice over: it’s ammunition for the anti-gambling faction and, since Godfrey is also the chair of the board at RioCan, it’s also pretty humiliating. [Globe and Mail]
Real estate cheat sheet: demand for offices, condo bidding wars and the echo boom’s influence
The sale of the TD Canada Trust Tower was one of the largest office property deals in 2012 (Image: Nhl4hamilton)
For the past six months, local real estate chatter revolved around Toronto’s cooling housing market. This week presented a refreshing change: three separate stories on how and why the city’s real estate sector is still alive and, in the case of commercial property, in hot demand. Below, we break down what the latest numbers mean.
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Banh Mi Boys’ downtown location is opening in February
(Image: @Olivia_de_Souza on Twitter)
Banh Mi Boys co-owner David Chau revealed on Twitter that the Yonge Street location of the popular Asian-fusion sandwich shop is going to be ready to launch by the end of February. Not bad, considering they only announced the new location in November. [Twitter]
Condomonium: $3.5 million for a Yorkville suite with a wonderfully excessive decor scheme
ADDRESS: 80 Yorkville Avenue, unit 1401
NEIGHBOURHOOD: Yorkville
AGENT: Janice Fox, Hazelton Real Estate Inc., Brokerage
PRICE: $3,450,000
THE PLACE: An opulent two-bedroom suite in 80 Yorkville, a full-service building with valet parking, a concierge service, a gym and a yoga centre.
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Adam Vaughan Vs: Paul Godfrey’s hypocritical stance on casino locations
Councillor Adam Vaughan is a staunch downtowner, a vocal casino opponent and a master of the well-timed zinger, all reasons why OLG chair and casino booster Paul Godfrey ought to have been expecting a smackdown after saying he wouldn’t want a casino in his own neighbourhood because it’s a residential zone. (Godfrey later reiterated to the Globe and Mail that “I said certainly I wouldn’t want one in my neighbourhood either. We’re not sticking it in a residential zone.”) As one might expect, Vaughan leapt to respond, penning an open letter to Ontario’s finance minister Dwight Duncan calling the comments “stupid” and noting that hundreds of thousands of people live downtown. Sounds like both sides are trying to stir up a little support for the first of Toronto’s public consultations on the casino, which, coincidentally, start tonight. [Globe and Mail]
(Image: BriYYZ)
Year in Review: international brands had a love affair with Toronto
Condo developers aren’t the only ones salivating over Toronto’s buoyant economy. A raft of international retailers set up shop this year, hoping to capitalize on the city’s boom times. They flocked to malls and retail strips, and every month brought another announcement of a big brand heading this way (with Nordstrom and Target also slated to open Toronto outposts, the trend isn’t showing signs of slowing). Below, a roundup of the most high-profile stores that opened in the last 12 months.
Bell stakes its claim for downtown Toronto condo owners with big-time cable discounts
A high-stakes turf war is heating up between Rogers and Bell over the chance to provide television to Toronto’s ever-growing ranks of downtown condo-dwellers. For decades, bylaws prohibiting satellite dishes on condo balconies prevented Bell from selling its satellite TV in high-rises, leaving Rogers to sign exclusive deals with developers. But the landscape has changed: Rogers’ deals are now expiring and, with Fibe TV, Bell has traded in ugly satellites for discreet fiber optics cable. The company recently made its first major play, offering steep discounts on TV and PVR rentals (but buyer beware: the ultra-low rates expire after a year, and customers must also sign up for home phone and internet). Bell has even taken the unprecedented step of running fiber into single suites—some private residences at the Four Seasons are on Fibe—setting the precedent for a gritty customer-by-customer battle between it and Rogers. And here we thought the competitors were learning to play nice. [Globe and Mail]
The Chase: a first-time buyer finds her dream downtown condo in under a week
The buyer: Natalie Pastuszak, a 28-year-old marketing associate.
The story: Pastuszak was sharing a home with her mother in Etobicoke and suffering an hour-long commute to and from the Financial District. “I was just going from one underground parking lot to another,” she says. “I wasn’t even going outside.” Two years ago, she finally decided to move downtown. She’d watched rents skyrocket and figured owning wouldn’t be much more expensive, so she started poring over MLS listings and researching condos online. By last summer, her finances were in order and she was ready to begin looking in earnest. Her dream place was a sunny one-bedroom suite with a terrace and an on-site gym for no more than $300,000—and it had to be within walking distance of work. (She was especially drawn to the eating and drinking scene on King West.) Thanks to her homework, it took only five days of condo hunting before she got exactly what she wanted.
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Philip Preville: How the crumbling Gardiner became a symbol for all that ails Toronto
While city hall spent a decade debating what to do with the Gardiner—Demolish it? Bury it? Raise it?—the expressway fell into ruin. The perils of chronic indecision
Torontonians spent most of the last decade studying, researching and letting their imaginations run wild with plans and proposals to boldly transform the Frederick G. Gardiner Expressway corridor. There was never any money to devote to the project, but never mind. Everyone weighed in. Let’s bury it! No, let’s turn it into a grand avenue! Design guru and public optimist Bruce Mau, in a fit of contrarian exuberance, proposed raising it even higher. Others suggested a cable-stayed double-decker version. Well, here endeth the lesson: while we were rapt in our salon-style discussion of the Gardiner’s bold future, it fell into ruin. So did our civic dreams. From now on, decisions will be made on the basis of affordability, expediency and convenience, not great design or
urban transformation.
A report from the engineering firm IBI Group, commissioned by the city and made public in late October, called the Gardiner “a significant hazard to public safety.” It found that the regularly scheduled visual inspections conducted by city staff—in essence, little more than standing beneath the Gardiner and looking up—had greatly underestimated the extent of its deterioration. In areas where the spot checks turned up nothing, the report found hundreds of metres of cracks as well as signs of delamination—the process by which the steel rebar embedded in the concrete begins to rust, causing it to expand and break the roadbed apart from the inside.
Introducing: Hawthorne Food and Drink, a new downtown restaurant with a social mission
(Image: Karolyne Ellacott)
When the bold new 60 Richmond Street East co-op building was completed in 2010, the builders left open a medium-sized space on the ground floor for a restaurant, hopefully one with a social mission that would complement that of Unite Here, the hospitality industry union that runs the co-up. More than two years later, chef Eric Wood, fresh off launching Fabarnak at the 519 community centre, has opened up Hawthorne in that space. Wood serves an ever-changing menu of dishes with flavours inspired by Toronto’s vast assortment of ethnic cuisines—and runs a three-month paid training program for young cooks fresh out of school and hoping to learn the ropes.
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New Sukhothai location to open on Monday
Sukhothai’s khao soi (Image: Renée Suen)
Sukhothai, the tiny Parliament Street restaurant that amassed a cult following for its homey Northern Thai cuisine, is opening a second location at Wellington and Church on Monday. Taking over the space that was formerly home to Habaneros, the new Sukhothai will be much, much larger, with over 100 seats, and will also have a liquor licence, something the original was sorely lacking. The good news for downtowners will mean temporary bad news for Regent Park residents, however: the Parliament location is closing down for a month while the entire staff moves over to Wellington to get the new spot set up.
Sukhothai, 52 Wellington St. E., 647-351-4612
Bruce Woods resigns as chef at Modus
(Image: Gizelle Lau)
Last year, Modus Ristorante launched at King and York, and its refined Italian cuisine quickly earned it a reputation as a Bay Street power spot. Bruce Woods, the chef who helped propel the restaurant to number eight on our list of the city’s best new restaurants, has now resigned. “I approached Modus as a partnership,” Woods told us in an email, “yet at the end of the day I was not an acting partner.” The chef, who previously helmed the kitchens at Centro and Brassaii, is now scouting for a space for his own restaurant, which, like Modus, will serve Italian cuisine in a clean and modern room. But don’t expect Woods to decamp to the Dundas West, Ossington or College strips, like so many chef-restaurateurs. He says: “The location and concept will be designed with my current clientele in mind.”
Q&A: Amjad Tarsin, U of T’s new Islamic chaplain, on Gaddafi, TIFF and moving to Toronto
Amjad Tarsin, a 28-year-old law school dropout with a fondness for fantasy lit, is the new Islamic chaplain at U of T
U of T’s Muslim Chaplaincy hired you in September after a lengthy search process. What will your role be?
I’m essentially a counsellor who has a religious background. The concept of the chaplain was originally a Christian idea, but nowadays you have all kinds of chaplains—Jewish,
Buddhist, Muslim.
You’re 28. Was youth something the search committee was looking for?
I’m not sure. I have a master’s degree in Islamic studies, and I worked for a year as chaplain at Fairfield University in Connecticut, but it also wasn’t that long ago that I was at university myself, so I can relate to the students. My focus in undergrad was English, Arabic and Islamic studies, and then I did two years of law school at the University of Michigan.
Why did you leave law school?
I enrolled for the wrong reasons. In undergrad, I’d get into arguments about all kinds of things, and at some point I thought I should be a lawyer. But Islamic studies were where my
heart was.
How would you describe your upbringing? Read the rest of this entry »
My parents are very religious. They emigrated to the U.S. from Libya in the early 1970s to escape political persecution under Gaddafi. They were very involved in speaking out against
his dictatorship.
Philip Preville: The case for making bike helmets mandatory
Driving without a seat belt is considered absurdly reckless. Why isn’t cycling without a helmet?
Any cyclist who’s ever been in an accident knows the feeling of being thrown upon the mercy of the grid. There is no way of predicting how the vectors will play out, nor any providence that can harness them, even for the most trifling mishap. All you can do is gird yourself.
Back in August, 47-year-old Joseph Mavec was cycling along quiet west end Wychwood Avenue when his bike’s front wheel got snagged in an old, unused streetcar track. My wife did the same thing eight years ago in the very same location and walked away with a scrape. Mavec struck his head on the pavement and quickly died. He was not wearing a helmet.
Fate was both crueler and kinder to Wendy Trusler. On July 19, 2000, Trusler was cycling north on Spadina toward College Street, back in the days when metal posts, not concrete curbs, separated the tracks from other traffic. She made a snap decision to cut across the tracks mid-block—and unwittingly into the path of a northbound 510 silently approaching at 50 kilometres an hour. “It was maybe 10 feet away from me when I saw it,” she says. “I only had time to turn my back to it.” The streetcar hit Trusler, and she bounced back and forth between it and the bollards for roughly five metres, the red rocket cracking the ribs on her left side, the posts snapping her right femur. By the time all moving bodies came to rest she had 17 broken bones, including her clavicle, shoulder blade, cheekbone and jaw. But she was wearing a helmet, and she suffered no cranial or brain trauma.
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