How Toronto's condo boom gives chain stores the upper hand

Toronto's streets are becoming a familiar landscape of chain stores and fast food franchises.

Thestar.com
May 1, 2017
By Christopher Hume

Wandering the streets of Toronto, there's little evidence of the diversity the city motto says is our strength.

More than ever, Toronto's built environment is an instantly familiar landscape of chain stores, fast food franchises and the like. We all know who they are: Shoppers Drug Mart, Starbucks, Tim Hortons, Subway, Pizza Pizza, LCBO outlets . . . One corner now could be any corner. One street now looks like any other street.

Across the city, there's a growing sense of monotony and sterility. Toronto is being buried beneath layers and layers of corporate branding and the monomaniacal sameness that lies at its heart, the logos, the standardized colour schemes, the decor, signage, typeface, uniforms, facades . . . To the corporate mind, this is how a business ingratiates itself and ensures that its outlets aren't just recognizable but impossible to ignore. From the civic perspective, however, it's an onslaught on everything that makes the city lively and engaging.

Worse still, the condo boom that has remade Toronto has also remade its retail. The economics of the development industry have hastened the corporatization of the city and made it exponentially worse. Not only does the urban playing field tilt in favour of big business, it contributes significantly to the demise of small operators.

It all starts with the form of the 21st-century condo in Toronto; a highrise tower atop a low rise podium. The former is where developers make their money; the latter is required by the city. Though it seemed a good idea at the time - the base allows for the continuation of the streetscape - in reality, it has become another way for builders to enhance their profit and spread dullness.

Typically, developers retain ownership of the podium. Because banks prefer large businesses, and only they can afford the rent and sign leases three years in advance, they usually get the space. A developer that can snag, say, a Shoppers and an LCBO has hit the jackpot. Who cares that the city is already lousy with drug marts, more than 300 at last count?

“I just got a call yesterday about a Pizza Pizza that's coming to College St.,” laments downtown Councillor Mike Layton. “Now Hooters is moving in a what was a wonderfully authentic Italian restaurant on College. It's the same five stores at the bottom of every condo.”

Layton, who recently requested a report on how Toronto can stop the chain stores from overrunning the city, looks to examples like San Francisco, which leads the fight against what it calls “formula use retail.”

As that city's website notes, the “sameness of Formula Retail outlets, while providing clear branding for consumers, counters the general direction of certain land use controls . . . which value unique community character and therefore need controls, in certain areas, to maintain neighbourhood individuality.”

San Francisco defines chain stores as “a retail sales establishment that has eleven or more . . . establishments in operation . . . anywhere in the world.” They are permitted in some parts of the city, not in others. These rules, written into the San Francisco Planning Code, stand in stark contrast to the situation here, where chains do what they want.

Toronto does have a “character neighbourhood” designation, but as Layton points out, “It doesn't have much planning clout.”

One simple solution would be to force developers to limit the size of retail units so they are too small to suit the chains. Toronto's most successful streets - King, Queen, College - are lined with narrow with storefronts - four to five metres wide - that can be used and reused through generations. But even that would need builders' co-operation. Then there's the question of how the Ontario Municipal Board would respond.

Ultimately, this urban homogenization raises the question of who the city serves - business or people? The answer, of course, is both. But handing the city over to corporate interests helps neither. As Layton asks, “Why would anyone come to Queen St. if the stores are the same here as everywhere?”

Already Queen West is mostly a memory. The chains arrived years ago.

The final irony, of course, is the self-defeating nature of the chain stores' strategy. Pretty soon, Shoppers Drug Marts will have nothing to compete with but other Shoppers Drug Marts. And how many Starbucks or Tim Hortons do we really need?

Ultimately, the market will decide. And if we're lucky, the city might have something to say, too. In the meantime, though, Toronto's streets are fast becoming dead ends.