St Clair Ave West. Is about to lose the large green verge along side the north side of Home Depot. This green area is a pleasant addition to the avenue that will be missed. Placed there at the time of the stock yards conversion to big box retail now the poles have been cut and new poles moved back towards the Home Depot store.
A look at the new planned streetscape drawing indicates there will be no large volume of grass area.
The loss of the green space can be used to highlight a the rapid and massive changes taking place one again the north Junction area àASIDE: is their a name the local community puts to the area around St Clair Ave West and Weston rd, if anyone knows would they please let the blog know.
7 Comments
That Home Depot has no entrance or exit (zero, 0, nil, blank) on its north side of the building for its customers to use. One has to walk 180° around the building to get to the entrance. Definitely not a transit or pedestrian oriented building.
I live in the area. My husband and I affectionately call it NoJo for North Junction. (NoJu, though technically correct, just sounds 50 shades of wrong.)
I live in the Tiffany Park development, and my friend coined the neighbourhood name "Slaughterton". I kinda like it!
We call it NoJo as well!
I’ve always called this area The Stock Yards, the WTJHS also says it should be two words not one.
Anyway, I hate to see any stretch of green removed but with the new shopping centre, changes to the Gunns loop and proposed improvements to the Tarrogona Park (as a result of the shopping centre) this small area will be so different in 3 years you won’t even recognize it.
I think of it as the northern edge of the Junction ("North Junction" is quite appropriate IMO). This bit of the Junction had a huge slaughterhouse industry, and was probably an integral part of West Toronto as an employment centre (counting 4000 different firms thirty years ago, according to some City reports).
I wish that the Home Depot would do some "home improvements" of their own and address the main street with an entrance, especially given the money that the City is spending to improve transit there.
Also, not included in this post is the reason for the removal of the greenspace: road widening for the streetcar right-of-way. There's no plan to reconstruct the railway underpass to widen the road and to improve that neglected space, so there will be a bottleneck there.
We like to call our Junction area, St. Clair West village. Our development on the north side of St. Clair has an entryway with that name on it. It is also the Stock Yards too. I don't see any news about the city meeting held about the Trinity developments site that happened last Monday evening (September 14th 2009, 7pm) My husband attended and he said it was very modern looking, with all the stores with store fronts along St. Clair from Gunns Road to Keele/Weston. Store fronts along Weston Road as well. Very pedestrian friendly, large sidewalks and lots of bicycle parking as well. The plans were preliminary so there are no official retailers yet, although I think a bank was mentioned. Do you actually call unkempt grassy areas next to busy streets green space? The Trinity developments plan to improve neighbouring parks in the area as well (the playground east of Weston Road, and the playground, west of Gunns). We were told St. Clair West will be widened up to Runnymede. Prepare for more construction! Anyone have news about the retail space development west of Runnymede along St. Clair West to Jane (about what it will look like)? TD bank is opening there.