Editor’s Letter (August 2013): the party pooping Parkdale restaurant moratorium

A happy story, right? A sign of the city’s economic well-being and the overall health of our downtown? Not according to Gord Perks, the area’s city councillor, who says the restaurant invasion threatens to wreck the existing mix of stores and services that Parkdale residents rely upon. He is also concerned that the new wave of partying produces too much noise and traffic. Back in 2011, he asked the planning department to study the impact of restaurant proliferation. He later lobbied city council to impose a 12-month moratorium on new restaurants, until the results of the study were known. This spring, city hall planners released a detailed 30-page report that proposes something radical: the restriction of restaurants along the strip to 25 per cent of all businesses. The proposal is soon going to council for a vote. If it passes, it will be the first of its kind: targeted city hall restaurant kiboshing.

This strikes me as totally bananas. Shouldn’t the city be encouraging economic growth? As for noise, if restaurants are violating municipal bylaws, the city should fine them. We have rules that govern such things. Let’s enforce them.

But of course the dispute isn’t really about noise. It’s a culture clash: old Parkdale versus new. The preservationists versus the gentrifiers. The report, alas, comes down hard on the side of safeguarding the status quo, even though its authors can’t identify what’s worth preserving. They admit the area “has experienced vacant storefronts and undesirable activities related to drug use and crime,” and yet they fret that restaurants threaten Parkdale’s future chances for a “healthy” and “well-functioning” main street.

In reality, the strip is still a hodgepodge of dingy storefronts struggling to stay afloat: itinerant dollar stores, last-resort jewellers (“We buy gold!”) and payday loan outlets. Hooray for the restaurateurs willing to move in, fix things up, attract new business. It’s galling to think of how much time and taxpayer expense has gone into studying the so-called problem of too many restaurants in Parkdale.

Here’s the thing: cities are never static. They are either growing or shrinking. Happily, Toronto is growing. Yorkville was once a sketchy few blocks of clubs and coffee houses. Until recently, Leslieville was pretty dodgy. Parkdale is following in the footsteps of many beloved Toronto neighbourhoods, one taqueria at a time.

(Image: Christopher Wahl)