St. Clair Street Car Chaos
The other night the news on TV featured a story about the St. Clair Ave. TTC right-of-way. Regular readers have heard me rant about this before. It seems the city has failed to coordinate construction contracts, meaning that once the work along St. Clair is done, they're going to tear up parts of the streets and sidewalks again to eliminate lead water lines. The businesses along Corso Italia are taking a bath. According to this article, "the situation is dramatic, with some store owners closing shop and others suffering a 25-30% reduction in their business." The cost of the project has apparently escalated from $32 million to $100 million.
I'd like to urge Toronto residents to make a point to visit Corso Italia shops and restaurants and give these folks your business!
2 comments:
Thanks or the update Mr. A. I'll get up there and shop around!
We have much the same situation out on the Pacific coast. When the Richmond-Airport-Vancouver Skytrain (elevated rail) line, called the RAV, was proposed, business owners along the "Cambie St. Corridor" went berserk.
Their ruffled feathers were soothed by a promise from the government to tunnel beneath them rather than use the "cut-and-cover" method.
Come the actual project: Cut and cover it was. And business have been haemorraging money. A cafe that had been running twenty years, belonging to an acquaintance, closed down within two months.
Most of the empty buildings are, of course, snapped up or leased at bargain-basement prices by developers. And come 2010 they'll all get rich(er) selling them to each other.
Some of my friends believe it's conspiracy. I just have faith in incompetent planning.
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