Loft con­ver­sion projects are trans­form­ing aban­doned fac­tory lands into res­i­den­tial neigh­bour­hood as local res­i­dents want rede­vel­op­ment that inte­grates with the community.

About four years ago, shortly after devel­op­ers tore down a derelict indus­trial build­ing on Lans­downe Ave., local res­i­dent Dyan Marie decided it was time to get a cat. The rodent pop­u­la­tion in the neigh­bour­hood exploded when the boarded-up eye­sore, once home to the Amer­i­can Stan­dard fac­tory, was razed.

“No one wanted to touch those build­ings for 20 or 30 years, so we were delighted when the devel­op­ers moved in. But when they started clean­ing it up, the mice and rats infested the neigh­bour­hood,” the local activist recounts.

Adopt­ing her cat, Pip, was a small price to pay to see Lans­downe Ave. rede­vel­oped. New con­do­mini­ums and condo town­houses are now replac­ing aban­doned fac­to­ries, and the influx of new home­own­ers is revi­tal­iz­ing the neighbourhood.

“The rodent infes­ta­tion was just a pass­ing phase,” laughs Marie, founder of DIG IN (Dupont Improve­ment Group: Improv­ing the Neigh­bour­hood.) “We’re delighted we’re get­ting these lands back on line. We do see the neigh­bour­hood mak­ing huge improvements.”

A cen­tury ago, fac­to­ries were drawn to the neigh­bour­hood because of three rail­way lines that run through it. But most have since shut their doors and moved to cheaper, more acces­si­ble prop­er­ties out­side the down­town core. Like other for­mer indus­trial sites in Toronto, such as Lib­erty Vil­lage, Lans­downe is now tran­si­tion­ing into a res­i­den­tial neighbourhood.

About 24 hectares of land on Lans­downe between Bloor St. and Dav­en­port Ave. were for­merly home to Cana­dian Gen­eral Electric’s Dav­en­port Works, which set up shop in 1902. The Dav­en­port Works churned out every­thing from loco­mo­tives and trans­form­ers to televisions.

Much of the land has now been pur­chased by devel­oper Tom Falus. He has built about 210 stacked, two– and three-storey brick and stucco con­do­minium town­houses on the south­west cor­ner of Lans­downe and Bloor. Now, Falus is almost fin­ished con­vert­ing a century-old build­ing into 100 live-work, two-storey lofts at a project called The Foundry Lofts.

“It has good bones. It will be brought back to its orig­i­nal glory,” he says, speak­ing excit­edly about what is now known as The Foundry Lofts, which fronts onto Lans­downe. Falus, who has also built many rental units and houses in the area, sees The Foundry Lofts as his crown jewel.

Tour­ing the dark, gritty inte­rior, he boasts of its poten­tial. Sky­lights that run the entire length of the build­ing have been boarded up for decades. Falus plans to remove those boards and bathe the new lofts in nat­ural light. He hopes to do a sim­i­lar con­ver­sion on an iden­ti­cal struc­ture, adja­cent to The Foundry Lofts, rather than knock it down.

He also plans to spare a 216-foot-high smoke stack from the wreck­ing ball. It was once the second-tallest such struc­ture in Canada.

For Marie, the best part of the devel­op­ment is see­ing the toxic brown­fields cleaned up. The for­mer GE site is con­t­a­m­i­nated with such chem­i­cals as trichloroeth­yl­ene, a degreaser for metal.

“In the 1980s, this was the most toxic neigh­bour­hood in Canada. A lot of work has been done to clean it up,” she says.

Ward 18 Coun­cil­lor Adam Giambrone has his fin­gers crossed for the future of the site. “I’m really afraid that if you don’t do it right, you just put up bor­ing con­dos. His­tor­i­cal ren­o­va­tions cost more. The cheap­est thing to do is put up boxes,” he says. “There’s a poten­tial there for the absolutely most amaz­ing development.”

Giambrone is ner­vous because of some of Falus’ ear­lier work in the area, namely the replace­ment of the for­mer Amer­i­can Stan­dard fac­tory with a six-storey rental com­plex. The build­ing, aptly named the Stan­dard, is cov­ered in stucco and its back faces onto Lansdowne.

“It’s clas­sic bad plan­ning. There’s only one point of vehic­u­lar access,” Giambrone says. “What you have is an area that’s cut off from the sur­round­ing community.”

Falus says he was con­strained in build­ing the Stan­dard because he wanted to keep some of the old Amer­i­can Stan­dard infra­struc­ture intact. For exam­ple, he says he wanted to pre­serve some inte­rior brick walls, and that meant hav­ing to insu­late on the out­side. The insu­la­tion, in turn, then had to be cov­ered in stucco.

Marie is try­ing to get devel­op­ers to work in tan­dem with area res­i­dents. “Devel­op­ment is going to over­take this neigh­bour­hood, no mat­ter what we do. We just want to mod­er­ate it so that it inte­grates into the com­mu­nity. Devel­op­ment is a pow­er­ful force here,” she says.

She and her group have been instru­men­tal in low­er­ing the height of some devel­op­ments, and in pro­mot­ing the exis­tence of more green space. For exam­ple, they were suc­cess­ful in fight­ing to lower the height of a 1,600-plus-unit devel­op­ment on the site of the exist­ing Gal­le­ria Mall, on the cor­ner of Dupont and Dufferin.

“We’re not happy with every­thing devel­op­ers are doing, but they are work­ing to improve the neigh­bour­hood. They’re tak­ing big finan­cial risks to move into the neigh­bour­hood. It’s up to us to work with devel­op­ers in a pos­i­tive way,” she says.

An artist, Marie has also helped cre­ate pub­lic art­work in the neigh­bour­hood. The Walk Here Project, a work in progress, is a walk­way con­nect­ing area parks. It includes dis­plays of works by area artists, includ­ing Marie.

She says the area is a haven for artists. “A lot of artists moved into the neigh­bour­hood because Queen St. has become so expen­sive,” she says. “This is the most rea­son­ably priced neigh­bour­hood that’s still within the city.”

Marie notes that plans are in the works to open two art gal­leries in the area this fall – one on Dupont and another on Lans­downe. But as with all regen­tri­fied neigh­bour­hoods made cool by artists, con­flict inevitably arises when devel­op­ers pur­chase the land for rede­vel­op­ment and dis­place artists from their afford­able digs.

Such is the case with a for­mer indus­trial build­ing Falus owns on the north­west cor­ner of Lans­downe and Dupont, now home to more than 25 artist stu­dios. The devel­oper plans to knock down the struc­ture and build a commercial-residential com­plex there.

It could become home to a drug store, a video store and a con­do­minium tower. Falus is enthused about the project and hopes it will be among his proud­est achieve­ments, up there with The Foundry Lofts development.

Kitty cor­ner to that is a new devel­op­ment that has met the sat­is­fac­tion of both exist­ing res­i­dents and devel­op­ers. The new, seven-storey, mod­ern glass build­ing, known as the Chelsea Lofts, was ready for occu­pancy last year. “It’s a very urbane, con­tem­po­rary design. We are very proud of our work,” says devel­oper Rashmi Nathwani.

The units boast nine-foot ceil­ings and large, warehouse-style win­dows. The build­ing also includes three ground-level retail units, one of which has already been pur­chased by a dentist.

“We go into areas in tran­si­tion. That’s what we do. It’s where the land is most afford­able,” says Nath­wani, who spe­cial­izes in infill projects. He says sales started off slowly, but picked up this sum­mer. Asked about the slow start, he explains: “It’s not Col­lege and Clin­ton – yet.”

Indeed, Lans­downe has long been known for its prob­lems with drugs and pros­ti­tu­tion. But that’s chang­ing, Nath­wani says. He points to a sim­i­lar tran­si­tion he saw when he built a devel­op­ment on Jarvis and George streets 10 years ago. “There was a big prob­lem with crack there, but as soon as we built, it went away,” he explains.

Ross McK­er­ron, who works with Falus, agrees. “Devel­op­ment changes the tone of a neigh­bour­hood. When you talk to plan­ners, they talk a lot about hav­ing eyes on the street.” Dur­ing the years that build­ings sat idle on Lans­downe, there were no eyes on the street.

“It becomes an attrac­tion for vagrancy and squat­ters,” he explains. “Not that any­one is putting out the wel­come mat for them, but no one is say­ing you’re not wel­come either.”

Area res­i­dents are hope­ful that a new police sta­tion, planned for the west side of Lans­downe just north of Bloor, will serve as a deter­rent to crime. “You’re going to see more police pres­ence… and I think we’re going to see an actual reduc­tion in the drug and pros­ti­tu­tion trade at Bloor and Lans­downe,” Giambrone says.

Marie bris­tles at the media’s fix­a­tion on the area’s crime prob­lems, choos­ing instead to focus on its assets. Attrac­tions include the Wal­lace Emmer­son Com­mu­nity Cen­tre, the Joseph Picininni Com­mu­nity Cen­tre, Corso Itialia and Earlscourt Park.

Marie also points out the neighbourhood’s vast array of qual­ity eater­ies, includ­ing Piri-Piri Por­tuguese Churasqueira and Grill House on Dupont, Caldense Bak­ery and Pas­tries on Syming­ton, Soul Food on Lans­downe and South Indian Dosa Mahal on Bloor. A new cafe, called Yasi’s Place, is set to open on Wal­lace Ave. in the fall. The restau­rants reflect the neighbourhood’s diver­sity. Many res­i­dents are of Por­tuguese and Ital­ian her­itage, while many peo­ple of South Asian and South­east Asian her­itage are mov­ing in.

The area has always been a draw to new Cana­di­ans because of its afford­abil­ity and prox­im­ity to the Lans­downe sub­way sta­tion and Bloor GO sta­tion. The new con­do­mini­ums are attract­ing a lot of young, sin­gle first-time buy­ers. Nath­wani says the major­ity of pur­chasers at Chelsea Lofts are young urban professionals.

Many young peo­ple are mov­ing onto Bloor St., just west of Lans­downe, where sev­eral con­dos are sprout­ing up, such as the Bloor­line Lofts, Bloor West Lofts, Bloor Street Sta­tion, Be Bloor and The Bloor. McK­er­ron says the neigh­bour­hood is ide­ally sit­u­ated between the Annex and Bloor West Vil­lage.

“It’s still in the early days of its trans­for­ma­tion. Peo­ple who buy here now are ahead of the curve,” he says.

Giambrone agrees. “If I had to buy a house today, I would prob­a­bly pick right in the Bloor-Lansdowne area. There are still a lot of chal­lenges and I don’t think we can under­es­ti­mate them, but the area is incred­i­bly under­val­ued in terms of prop­erty val­ues,” he says.

“You can still buy a house in the area for $250,000, which is pretty amaz­ing for being that close to the sub­way,” he adds. Accord­ing to the Toronto Real Estate Board, the median price of sin­gle detached resale homes in this area (W2) has increased by a whop­ping 52% since July 2000.

The median price of a single-family detached home in the area in July was $439,500, up from $290,000 in 2000.

“That area is only get­ting bet­ter – with a new police sta­tion going in, with con­dos going in and with the price of land con­tin­u­ing to go up in Toronto,” Giambrone sug­gests. “I think if peo­ple are look­ing for an area that’s going to be chang­ing, that’s it.”
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Con­tact the Jef­frey Team for more infor­ma­tion – 416−388−1960