Today at the office we took a time out during lunch to plant vegetables on the rooftop of our building. Using 100 EarthBoxes, we planted everything from lettuce to hot peppers. It was a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to fresh salads throughout the summer.

I only recently learned about EarthBoxes through a colleague at work, who has a significant amount of experience in the world of urban agriculture. The way the boxes work is that they have an aeration screen at the bottom that serves to create a reservoir for water. You then fill it with water regularly and, through capillary action, the soil is kept properly watered with minimal maintenance. They’re explicitly designed for growing on balconies, terraces and rooftops.

I was so impressed by the boxes today that I came home and bought 3 margarita lime green EarthBoxes for my own terrace. They’re only $30 if you buy 3 at a time. I think urban farming is something that we’re going to need to do more of in the future and so I wanted to give it a try myself. It’s healthy and environmentally sustainable, and I’m sure everything will taste great.

I plan to start with lettuces, kale, cucumbers and hot peppers in my terrace garden.

The big news in Toronto real estate today is that Streetcar Developments has picked up the Broadview Hotel at the northwest corner of Queen Street East and Broadview Avenue in the city’s east end. The building is best known for housing Jilly’s–the finest in adult entertainment.

I don’t know what it sold for, but the twittersphere seems to think it went for somewhere between $4 and $6 million. My guess is that it’s on the higher end of that range.

The deal is interesting because there have been rumors circulating for years about its future. At one point there were rumblings that it was going to become a Drake Hotel on the east side–which does seem like a natural fit, and would be exciting for the Riverside area.

And while we still don’t know what it’s going to be, Streetcar–which is a condo and loft developer–has said the plan isn’t to turn it into residential condos:

“Although rooted in loft development, Streetcar does not see this building as a residential condominium project. We are in the early stages of planning, but our focus is to revive this building to a landmark everyone in the area can be proud of.”

That’s interesting. They also don’t deny that it could remain a hotel.

I don’t want to automatically assume that something along the lines of the Drake Hotel (a hotel, bar, restaurant and cultural community center) is the right recipe for this building, but I do think there’s an opportunity for it to become a significant anchor–even more so than Jilly’s–on the east side of downtown.

Earlier this week I wrote about the rise of the east end. Maybe this will end up as the establishment that really gives West Queen West a run for its money. But in order to do so, I think Streetcar will need to find the right cultural entrepreneur to partner with. You can’t fake being effortlessly cool.

Either way, I’m thrilled that this building–built in 1893–will be preserved. If there were any plans to demolish it, I would chain myself to a stripper pole in protest. The Broadview Hotel is a real gem with loads of potential.

There’s a fairly real divide between east and west here in Toronto. When people talk about real estate or describe the kind of person they are, they often say things like: “I’m an east end kind of person” or “I only want to buy on the west side.” There’s such a split that somebody recently said in a meeting I was in that the east vs. west real estate divide is like Christianity vs. Judaism. 

Historically, the west has generally been considered more desirable than the east–regardless of what scale you’re looking at. Downtown west vs. downtown east, Etobicoke vs. Scarborough, and so on. And for whatever reason, this seems to be the case in a lot cities I’ve been to. Consider Montreal, Vancouver, New York, and London, to name a few. 

But lately, I’ve been noticing a growing acceptance of the east side. Friends are telling me that, even though they don’t know the east all that well, they’re almost agnostic to which side they buy a home on.

At the same time, we’re seeing Toronto’s development boom spread to the east along streets like Church and Jarvis; paralleling the kind of intensification we’ve already seen on the west along Bay Street, University Avenue and further. I’m also noticing a lot of west end restauranteurs open up on the east side. See Carbon Bar and Gusto 501 as two recent examples.

But with the neighborhoods like the Distillery District and Leslieville attracting lots of yuppies and with neighborhoods like Regent Park and the West Don Lands coming online, it shouldn’t come as a big surprise to you that developers and other entrepreneurs are looking east. Maybe you should too.