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When Mark Garner first visited Yonge Street south of Bloor, it was the late 1970s and like many young people of the era, he came from a distance – in his case, all the way in from Scarborough – for the famous street’s sometimes seedy but irresistible charms: in those days, rows of video arcades and record stores, movie theatres, music venues, bookstores, and the then-fresh glass cavern of the Eaton Centre. If he were born a few years later, it might have been the early and evolving annual Pride parades that drew him downtown, or BuskerFest, or So much has changed in North By Northeast.But downtown Toronto since the these days, Garner – who 1970s. Today, redevelopment is is now executive director of the Downtown Yonge taking place more rapidly than Business Improvement ever, putting pressure on the Area (BIA) – is watching few open public spaces in the the exploding redeveldowntown core. opment of Yonge Street and other avenues in the As part of a series of ongoing major developments near Yonge and Gerrard streets, downtown core, with the buildings behind Mark Garner, executive director of the Downtown Yonge BIA, more than a faint worry will soon be replaced with several large condo properties. that without significant Benjamin Priebe/METROLAND change, those kinds of
memories might be confined to an era. “These streets are the same streets I walked on as a kid from Scarborough,” he says. “They have not gotten any wider at all. They’ve poured new concrete, but this is the same street.” The street is the same but the buildings around soon will not be. The 80-storey Aura condominium tower at Yonge and Gerrard streets is currently the tallest condominium in the country. In a few years, it will be just the eighth tallest in Toronto, as new towers at Elm Street, Yonge and Gerrard, and Yonge and Bloor take form. And other buildings will occupy what has been useful open space in the neighbourhoods surrounding Yonge Street: the surface parking lots on Bay Street and, more crucially, Church Street to the east. When those go, so goes concert and marshalling spaces for the annual Pride Parade, and smaller festivals like BuskerFest and North >>>RAPIDLY, page 8
Girls learn how to skateboard without intimidation FANNIE SUNSHINE fsunshine@insidetoronto.com Male dominated sports can be a tough thing for girls to not only break into, but feel comfortable in. For six weeks this summer, 15 pre-teen and teenage girls had a chance to learn how to skateboard free of intimidation from their male counterparts. The all-girls skateboarding program, held every Tuesday at Grandravine Community Recreation Centre near Keele Street and Sheppard Avenue, allowed would-be female skateboarders to learn to ride in a judgement- and intimidationfree zone. The program, a partnership between the city of Toronto and the Chill Foundation, which provides free snowboarding and other boarding programs for youths in underserviced areas, wrapped up its first allgirls skateboarding session at Grandravine Tuesday, Aug. 16. “It’s really a male dominated space,” Alistair Thomson, the Chill Foundation’s Toronto >>>FREE, page 31
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