Should Richmond Hill downtown be pot stores, massage parlours?

'A good community needs a good downtown, not blight'

Yorkregion.com
Dec. 3, 2015
By Kim Zarzour

Why don’t you shop downtown?

Is it the traffic? Parking? Amenities?

It’s a puzzle that has baffled many who wish Richmond Hill had a thriving downtown because the fact is, if you’re like many residents, you probably don’t hang out much in the village core.

More than 100 years ago, it was the place to be, a picture-postcard village and the hub of the municipality with amenities from hotels to funeral homes, tailors, banks, a drugstore and meat market.

Today, the village stands like a forgotten bride at the altar, bedraggled and bereft, the once-rich architectural details hidden by false fronts, slapdash alterations, boarded-up windows and “for lease” signs.

“I believe that a good community needs a good downtown and what’s there now is a blight against all development in Richmond Hill,” community leader and owner of OnRichmondHill.com, Marj Andre, says, pointing to the preponderance of massage parlours, X-rated video shops, marijuana stores and now, rumours of a gun shop coming to town.

A new board of directors with the local BIA (business improvement area) hopes to shake things up with plans to market the area online, in a new directory and videos at the Richmond Hill Centre for Performing Arts.

But many observers say those are Band-Aid solutions, when major surgery is required.

“After 5:30 at night, it’s just a ghost town. Even daytime, there aren’t a lot of shops that are active,” says Ward 2 Councillor Tom Muench.

“Some people call it a ghetto,” he says. “The town has its head in the sand. This piecemeal approach to planning, solving one issue at a time, it’s just not working.”

Bryon Wilfert, chair of the board of the Richmond Hill Chamber of Commerce, agrees.

“Some nice things have been done in the core, but in the last few months the number of restaurants that have gone is staggering ... People are not going to go down there if it looks like a wasteland and right now it looks pretty bare. It’s never looked this bad.”

Allowing taller buildings in the core would make development more viable, he says.

“What we have now is landowners trying to get what tenants they can and if they get a tattoo parlour, they don’t care, it’s a few dollars back,” said Wilfert.

Muench points to property owners such as Mahdi Moradi who struggle to develop their land under the town’s strict regulations.

Moradi says he purchased property at 10027 Yonge St. in 2011 and tried over the past four years to renovate the heritage building.

It was to be a $40,000 reno project, but the town’s request for additional reports cost him $100,000. In 2014, he says, he and his partners submitted a development application for a larger four-storey project, but the time-consuming process of site plan approval has killed their motivation.

Moradi says his plans to build professional offices behind the heritage building and a restaurant in the front, which he’d hoped to start construction on in 2016, have cost $300,000 in studies and plan alterations and are now delayed by at least one year.

Meantime, the old building remains vacant, he says, save for the “homeless guy” who breaks down the door on a regular basis seeking shelter.

Just up the street a few blocks, Joanne Tomasone is more optimistic.

The Richmond Hill resident opened her shop, On the Dance Floor, in September with a boutique in the front and design workshop making custom theatre costumes in the back.

Located at 10235 Yonge St. across from the theatre, it’s perfect location for theatre-goers who wish to wander across the street and browse.

“I did have qualms and still do. I’m not too comfortable with some of the tenants in the area, but I’m extremely confident that if the buildings get cleaned up ... what a cute little community it will be.

“A lot of great people are living in Richmond Hill, a lot of affluent people. Why can’t we make it like a Bloor West Village or something?”

Richmond Hill resident Marlene Harvey shares that dream.

“It would be lovely to have a main street like Kleinburg or Unionville or Newmarket. We all go to those places to browse the unique little shops.”

Unionville may be a “pretty piece of preservation,” but unlikely to be replicated in Richmond Hill because Yonge is a major thoroughfare, says planning commissioner Ana Bassios. She believes the core is struggling because density is not high enough - yet.

“Downtown is on the cusp of revitalization, but it depends on people being there and people shopping there.”

The planned intensification along the Yonge Street corridor will bring more residents looking for walkable amenities, she says.

The town has already invested a lot creating a vision for the area, ensuring there are destinations, such as McConaghy Seniors Centre, the theatre, library, renovated post office, Ransom Parkette, public art, flower baskets and a grant to help businesses with façades.

The downtown secondary plan will make it easier to develop the core in a historic context, she says, and the People Plan task force, which meets Dec. 9, will focus on solving a key issue - parking and traffic in the core.

Mehrdad Sabouhi, the new chairperson of the BIA, admits the area faces “serious problems”, but he is hopeful.

As owner of an online private high school who teaches art from his building in the village, Sabouhi has a list of ideas for reviving the area: a village welcome sign, more permit flexibility from the town, better signage for parking and encouraging new developments be set back from the road to make room for sidewalk patios.

Sabouhi purchased property in the village nine years ago, thinking the new Tridel building signalled a change for the area, but he says businesses continue to struggle, some accepting tenants, such as those selling marijuana in order to cover costs.

He says he received a request from a businessperson wanting to rent a gun shop in his building.

“I told him no. He wanted to pay me a lot of money ... but at the end of the day, what would I say to my son?

“I am frustrated and tired, but it doesn’t mean I won’t fight forever for our village.”

Muench, too, says he is fighting for the downtown with meetings and robocalls seeking opinions. He is even floating the idea of burying Yonge Street.

“It could be like a little bit of Munich or old part of Europe. They have tunnels in mountains over there. We have a hill. We could easily put Yonge under the hill and have it come up the other side... We need to rip it up, keep what we think is prime and rebuild the village core. It’d be a walk in the park.”

For his part, Ward 4 Councillor David West hopes next week’s People Plan meeting to discuss the downtown transportation and parking study will be an important step forward.

Applications are coming forward soon that will help refresh the area, he says, and town hall will one day move back to Yonge and Major Mackenzie.

“The decline of ma and pa shops is happening everywhere. In a downtown area, businesses have to bring something to the table that big box stores can’t replicate and that is usually the boutique-type of store.”

Marijuana and massage shops aren’t ideal, but “the difficulty is, most real estate in the village is owned privately and as long as they are complying with property standards, we can’t order them to improve.

“It’s up to the marketplace, but the town has a role to set the stage.

“There’s no single magic bullet; we all need to continue to work to improve.”

Andre agrees.

“There are just so many different perspectives and the challenge is, how do you find a consensus and who takes the lead?”

With so many newcomers and immigrants in Richmond Hill bringing relatives to visit, it would be nice, she says, to have somewhere to go.

“We need to have a destination, a vibrant downtown.”