Tag: college park

• A new vision of Yonge Street

  

  Back in April I wrote about a competition for young people to reimagine public space in Toronto. It was called NXT City. Well that prize has been awarded and the winner was Richard Valenzona for his vision–called Yonge-Redux–of a new and reimagined Yonge Street. To download the PDF of his entry (the image shown above), click here.

  The proposal encompasses a stretch of Yonge Street that runs from Queen Street in the south, to College Street in the north. It would capture the Toronto Eaton Centre (mall), Yonge-Dundas Square, Ryerson University’s expanded Yonge Street footprint, and the massive mixed-use developments happening in the College Park area (see Aura Tower). To quickly simplify, the proposal is essentially about enhancing the urban experience, prioritizing pedestrians, and reducing the flow of cars to two lanes.

  Overall, I think it’s a wonderful proposal and I’m not surprised it won NXT City. This type of intervention is on so many of our minds. In fact, it’s somewhat surprising that we’ve been as slow as we have to improve our main street. There are so many anchor institutions, such as the Eaton Centre and Ryerson University, that plug into this section of Yonge Street. It makes a lot of sense.

  But as I said in my original post, one of the most exciting things about the NXT City Prize is that it has always been about execution. This is not just an academic exercise–or at least that’s the hope. This exercise is about spurring real change in the city and I genuinely hope that they’re successful in doing so. Because then I can turn around and say: Take that Melbourne 🙂

  Kudos to Richard Valenzona, Mackenzie Keast, as well as everyone else involved in NXT City, for making this initiative a reality and for doing your part to make Toronto even more awesome.

  2014.08.22

• A brief history of T. Eaton Co.

  

  I was out last night near Yonge and College for a friend’s going away party and the topic of the College Park building came up (originally an Eaton’s department store). We talked about how in the 1920s it was planned as a 38-storey Art Deco tower (see above photo), but that the Great Depression forced Eaton’s to scale back their plans. They ended up building a 7-storey building, albeit an impressive one.

  Then today, thinking about that discussion, I became curious about the story of Eaton’s. Where exactly did it start and how did they get to a point where they were planning the largest retail and office complex in the world?

  Well, as many of you probably know or can guess, the first Eaton’s store was opened where the Toronto Eaton Centre mall currently sits today. The exact address was 178 Yonge Street, which is just north of Queen Street. But what was interesting about this location is that, at the time, it was considered to be far removed from Toronto’s center of fashion and retail. That was King Street East. Below is a map from 1842.

  

  In 1869 when Timothy Eaton opened his first store, the heart of Toronto was what is today known as Old Town (although most people would probably just refer to it either as King East or as the St. Lawrence Market). People shopped along King Street between Yonge and Jarvis, and Queen Street probably would have felt out of the way.

  

  But Eaton’s succeeded at Yonge & Queen, along with rival store Simpson’s, and retailing shifted northward. With Eaton’s College Street, the company was once again looking north. In fact, they wanted to move their entire operation from Queen Street up to College Street, and they even tried to get Simpson’s department store to do the same (somebody clearly understood agglomeration economies).

  But since the full build out of Eaton’s College Street never actually happened, both stores were kept in operation and a customer shuttle bus was run between the two of them (until the Yonge subway line opened up in the 1950s). With the opening of the Toronto Eaton Centre mall in the 1970s, Eaton’s closed both Queen and College Street locations, and consolidated operations near Dundas Street.

  In 1999, after 130 years of operation, the company went bankrupt.

  What I find interesting about this story is that it speaks to how dominant the department store business model was at the time and how it was shaping the city around it. If Eaton’s had achieved its vision for the corner of Yonge & College, Toronto might look a lot different today. Perhaps we’d all be shopping for fashion along College Street.

  2014.04.28