Robyn Doolit­tle – Toronto Star

With the top down in her bur­gundy con­vert­ible, real­tor Kristyn Wong-Tam was enjoy­ing a sunny sum­mer day as she cruised east along Queen St. towards an office sup­ply store.

When the light turned red at Sher­bourne St., Wong-Tam was day­dream­ing about legal fold­ers and labels.

Sud­denly, some­one was scream­ing. A young woman with leath­ery skin and mat­ted blonde hair sprinted into traf­fic, then hurled her petite frame into Wong-Tam’s pas­sen­ger seat.

“Drive! Drive!” the woman shrieked hys­ter­i­cally, div­ing into Wong-Tam’s lap. “They’re going to kill me!”

“But it’s a red light, there’s a car in front of me,” Wong-Tam stammered.

Within sec­onds, two men appeared on oppo­site sides of the Mer­cedes, madly swing­ing their fists towards the woman. Wong-Tam was receiv­ing the major­ity of the blows.

The light changed. She hit the gas. In pain and trem­bling with fright, Wong-Tam pulled over a block later to call the police. The woman ran away.

Two years later, Wong-Tam is the neighbourhood’s city coun­cil­lor. She has never pub­licly spo­ken about the attack, but men­tions it reluc­tantly dur­ing an inter­view as proof of her per­sonal com­mit­ment to turn the area around.

It won’t be easy.

Year after year, the down­town east­side con­sis­tently tops every major Toronto police crime indic­tor list. Sim­ply put, this is the area in Toronto where, sta­tis­ti­cally, you are most likely to be shot, stabbed, robbed or sex­u­ally assaulted.

And while other prob­lem areas of the city — think Cab­bage­town, Leslieville, Park­dale, Regent Park — are cleaned up and gen­tri­fied, Dun­das and Sher­bourne has been left wait­ing for its turn.

That time is now, says Wong-Tam.

As builders snap up cheap plots of land, new lux­ury con­dos hit the mar­ket, and city hall plugs away at plans to over­haul its shel­ter sys­tem, Wong-Tam is work­ing to bring together iso­lated com­mu­nity members.

This per­fect storm of polit­i­cal will and pri­vate devel­op­ment money has city offi­cials, urban plan­ners and real estate investors pre­dict­ing a renais­sance on the Dun­das corridor.

“I would guess that, 10 years from now, you won’t be able to rec­og­nize that area,” said Ernie Light­man, an econ­o­mist at the Uni­ver­sity of Toronto. “To be hon­est, I’m sur­prised it has taken this long.”

It’s 8 a.m. on George St. The edge of the road is lit­tered with crack cocaine para­pher­na­lia — glass tubes, Brillo pads, chop­sticks — used con­doms and bot­tle caps.

Wong-Tam is com­ing to check up on a Toronto Com­mu­nity Hous­ing build­ing she vis­ited dur­ing the campaign.

“I was at the front door and a res­i­dent stopped me: ‘You don’t want to go in there,’ they said. It looked like it had never been cleaned — ever.”

Wong-Tam inher­ited a neigh­bour­hood in trouble.

The rea­sons are obvi­ous. The solu­tions less so.

Accord­ing to sta­tis­tics com­piled by Toronto police between 2005 and 2009, which the Star obtained through a free­dom of infor­ma­tion request, the Sher­bourne and Dun­das neigh­bour­hood ranks first in every major crime indi­ca­tor list.

The area hand­ily beat out neigh­bour­hoods tra­di­tion­ally regarded as trou­bled, such as Jane and Finch, Rogers and Keele, and Weston and Lawrence — areas where community-based polic­ing and social invest­ment have coin­cided with decreas­ing crime rates.

This has not been the case on the down­town eastside.

Bor­dered by Carl­ton St. to the north, Par­lia­ment St. to the east, Queen St. to the south and Jarvis St. to the west — an area less than one square kilo­me­tre in size — this tiny quad­rant of the city har­bours three of the city’s largest home­less shel­ters, 32 legal room­ing houses and 14 sus­pected ille­gal ones, more than a dozen aban­doned lots and build­ings, and one of the largest clus­ters of social hous­ing in the city.

This high con­cen­tra­tion of poverty lures preda­tors from other regions.

“It’s hard to say the exact num­bers, but I bet at least half of the deal­ers live in other parts of the city or not in Toronto at all. They come here because they know there’s a mar­ket,” said Sgt. Mike Ferry, who fre­quently patrols the area with the TAVIS rapid response team.

And in that same area there are few community-building ameni­ties. No gro­cery stores. No banks. And no friendly neigh­bour­hood pubs, unless you count the Filmore’s strip-club/hotel at the foot of George St.

Round­ing out the neigh­bour­hood are rows upon rows of expen­sive Vic­to­rian homes, which have been for­ti­fied with 2-metre-high wrought-iron fences.

“It’s prob­a­bly one of the worst-planned areas in the city,” said Wong-Tam.

And fix­ing that prob­lem is no sim­ple task.

For her part, the coun­cil­lor has helped resus­ci­tate a Busi­ness Improve­ment Area on Queen St. Wong-Tam, who owns a con­tem­po­rary gallery on Queen West, has been look­ing at ways to entice artists and their fam­i­lies to move into the com­mu­nity. She’s in talks with Artscape about build­ing afford­able homes and work­spaces. And in early May, she’ll be speak­ing with local young moth­ers about get­ting some proper play­ground equip­ment for Allan Gardens.

“I’ve also been meet­ing with devel­op­ers — ‘What do you need? Help me do this. How can we work together?’” she said.

If it’s true that a healthy neigh­bour­hood is a mixed-income one, the Dun­das cor­ri­dor needs more afflu­ent res­i­dents. Money brings local busi­nesses, which in turn get peo­ple walk­ing and shop­ping on the streets. The more eyes on the street, the safer the neigh­bour­hood becomes.

But it’s a chicken-and-egg prob­lem, says Light­man, an econ­o­mist with the Uni­ver­sity of Toronto fac­ulty of social work. Peo­ple with means typ­i­cally avoid areas with high crime rates. The neigh­bour­hood needs urban pio­neers to move in, plant roots and start the cycle.

“The thing that Dun­das and Sher­bourne has going for it is that it’s so close to every­thing,” he said. “The prop­erty is too valu­able. You’re already see­ing it. The devel­op­ment is clos­ing in.”

About four years ago, real estate mogul Brad J. Lamb was handed a seem­ingly impos­si­ble task: find buy­ers for lux­ury lofts at the cor­ner of Jarvis and Queen Sts.

It wouldn’t be the first ven­ture in the area. Some small-scale devel­op­ment had already taken place to the imme­di­ate south, but the Glasshouse Lofts was the first major project in the embat­tled region.

The 88-unit con­tem­porar­ily designed condo build­ing would be just one block away from where Wong-Tam was assaulted at Queen and Sher­bourne Sts.

In 2008, the owner of that corner’s noto­ri­ous Cof­fee Time was arrested for sell­ing mar­i­juana and crack to cus­tomers. Across the street from the dough­nut shop, now a fast-food chicken joint, is Moss Park Arena, where the city’s home­less con­gre­gate, and one of Toronto’s largest shel­ters, the Maxwell Meighen Center.

“It was a tough site. There were lit­er­ally crack­heads shuf­fling in front of the sales office,” said Lamb. “Before I came on, the project had failed at least three times. The devel­oper called me and I said, ‘I can make this work.’”

Lamb’s advice: Build with the buyer in mind. What types of peo­ple would over­look some neigh­bour­hood grit to be close to the core? Young pro­fes­sion­als. Arsty types. Investors. And what did those peo­ple want? Good-sized apart­ments with mod­ern fin­ishes and a very good price. Don’t bother with 1,000-square-foot units, because that buyer can’t afford them.

It worked. Glasshouse opened a lit­tle over a year ago.

Com­ment: Are we for­get­ting the fail­ure of Kor­mann House at the cor­ner of Queen & Sher­bourne? Or the East­side Lofts at Britain Street and Sher­bourne? The neigh­bour­hood is a very very touch sell. There are fan­tas­tic lofts in the area, already built, but I can­not sell them for love or money. No one wants to live there.

Gavin Mor­ris, a 35-year-old who works in finan­cial tech­nol­ogy, moved in this month.

“It was per­fect. It’s so close to work — the finan­cial dis­trict — the St. Lawrence Mar­ket, my favourite pub, shops. Basi­cally, I now have my whole life in just a few blocks,” he said.

And what about the less-desirable aspects of the neigh­bour­hood? The pan­han­dlers? The drug dealers?

“I don’t really think about them. I don’t even really notice them,” he said.

Now The Mod­ern condo is pick­ing up where Glasshouse left off. Peo­ple will be mov­ing in this fall.

And it’s not the only one. At Shuter and Jarvis Sts., Oxy­gen is slated to be fin­ished for 2013, and nearby Pace Con­dos, at Jarvis and Dun­das Sts., will be fin­ished in 2015.

With each new devel­op­ment comes thou­sands of dol­lars for the city in lucra­tive Sec­tion 37 fees. Builders can nego­ti­ate larger den­sity and height per­mits in exchange for mak­ing invest­ments in the com­mu­nity, such as a com­mu­nity pool or green space.

“There have not been many large-scale devel­op­ments in the area, so there isn’t a large pool of Sec­tion 37 funds,” said Wong-Tam. “This is what I am hop­ing to change.”

But just the pres­ence of those con­dos will change things, Lamb believes.

“The Mod­ern lit­er­ally touches that old crack dough­nut shop,” he said. “There’s prob­a­bly 300 con­dos in The Mod­ern, with an aver­age of 1.5 peo­ple liv­ing in each. Now 400 peo­ple are going to descend on the street — and you think they’re going to tol­er­ate crack­heads? They’re not.

“What’s going to hap­pen is huge pres­sure is going to come to bear on that inter­sec­tion. And the police and the city gov­er­nors are going to have to do some­thing about it.”

Lamb is so sure about this, he’s con­sid­er­ing buy­ing the lot across the street to develop himself.

It would be a wise invest­ment, said Roger Keil, direc­tor of The City Insti­tute at York University.

The Dun­das cor­ri­dor is the last fron­tier for down­town devel­op­ment. To the east, the ground­break­ing Regent Park revi­tal­iza­tion has trans­formed a once-dangerous area into a vibrant, even chic, place to live. From the west, mas­sive invest­ments and expan­sion by Ryer­son Uni­ver­sity have added sta­bil­ity and pres­tige to the down­town east­side, said Keil.

From the north, butting up against once-dangerous St. James Town, three condo devel­op­ments and a host of appli­ca­tions work­ing their way through the sys­tem have flooded the streets with young cou­ples and their dogs. Gen­tri­fi­ca­tion is clos­ing in on all sides.

“The remark­able thing here is the scale and speed at which these things are hap­pen­ing,” said Keil. “This is not the small-scale gen­tri­fi­ca­tion that’s hap­pen­ing in other areas, encroach­ing step by step, block by block, aban­doned build­ing by aban­doned building.”

But not every­one is convinced.

Mitchell Kosny, direc­tor of urban plan­ning at Ryer­son Uni­ver­sity, argues the area con­dos tend to exist as lit­tle islands within the community.

“I think the devel­op­ment will help; it will cre­ate more of a fix, but they’re not really con­nected. Peo­ple walk out­side and get right on the street­car or head to their park­ing garage,” he said.

Fol­low­ing the the­ory that new res­i­dents will push out the home­less pop­u­la­tion, the next ques­tion is: Well, then, where do they go?

Patri­cia Ander­son, a spokesper­son with the shel­ter, sup­port and hous­ing depart­ment at city hall, said there are no plans to remove any of the shel­ters, but there is a recog­ni­tion that some­thing needs to change.

“We want to return the emer­gency shel­ter pro­gram to its orig­i­nal func­tion. In Toronto, what’s hap­pened with some shel­ters is they’ve become de facto afford­able hous­ing. We’ll be shift­ing from man­ag­ing home­less­ness to end­ing it. We’ve already started doing that now.”

The area is sat­u­rated, so no more shel­ter beds will be added — there are cur­rently 1,012 in that small region — and there are plans to com­pletely ren­o­vate sev­eral shel­ters, includ­ing the infa­mous Seaton House on George St.

While the Seaton project is still in its infancy, an Octo­ber 2009 staff report sug­gests city offi­cials are push­ing for a mixed-income and mixed-use devel­op­ment. Retail, stu­dent lodg­ings, office space, per­ma­nent rental hous­ing, as well as improved coun­sel­ing and med­ical sup­port ser­vices, are all on the table.

And Wong-Tam is going to make sure this isn’t just another city ini­tia­tive that sits on the shelf col­lect­ing dust.

“Every time I see Phil Brown (gen­eral man­ager of the shel­ter, sup­port and hous­ing admin­is­tra­tion), I say: ‘We’ve got to do some­thing spec­tac­u­lar with Seaton House,’” Wong-Tam said.

“Today I bumped into him in the café. He looked at me and said: ‘Don’t say it. I know. We’re going to do it,’” she said. “And that’s just the beginning.”

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Con­tact the Jef­frey Team for more infor­ma­tion – 416−388−1960

Lau­rin & Natalie Jef­frey are Toronto Real­tors with Cen­tury 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these arti­cles, they just repro­duce them here for peo­ple
who are inter­ested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
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500 sher­bourne as a real estate investment

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