There goes the 'hood
Rising rents and rumours of H&M's move to Queen West leave locals mourning their once-hip strip
DEIRDRE KELLY
It's a familiar scene these days on Queen Street West: Long-time customers of the strip's funky indie businesses stop by to shop and discover a "Going out of business" sign in the window.
This week, it was Joan Frick's turn for a rude awakening. The artist and Queen West resident was found picking through the remains of Circa Forty, a vintage clothing store that after 14 years is closing in the wake of rising rent and rumours that Swedish fashion retailer H&M is expanding into the area. The move swells the ranks of foreign big-box stores such as Zara and HMV, which even now are altering the distinctive character of the Queen West streetscape.
After hearing the news, Ms. Frick began looking not just for a bargain but for a shared memory, a memento, of the halcyon days when Queen West was alternative and not mainstream, authentic and not a runway knock-off.
"The cool is no longer here," she griped. "It used to be a centre for artists and creativity and now it's becoming a shopping mall. And I don't like shopping malls."
Proprietor Philip Abtan, flanked by a canary yellow cocktail sweater festooned with sequins, agreed. "Queen Street is unique," he said. "I would call this one of the most unique streets in North America."
But the scene is changing fast. His shop had long been a fixture on the burgeoning strip, selling retro chic to poor but thread-proud locals as well as to the rich and mega-rich, including out-of-town visitors like Bruce Springsteen and Sharon Stone.
But with the arrival of commercial heavyweights to the area, Mr. Abtan has seen his rent steadily rise, from $2,300 a month two years ago to $3,000 last year. Now it's about to take a far bigger leap.
"My landlord said 30 days or $5,600. I took the 30 days."
He is setting up a new business, a furniture store, in the Vaughan Mills shopping mall north of the city. "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em," he said.
Ms. Frick looked up wide-eyed from the faded cognac leather jacket she was fingering. "My estimation of you has just dropped considerably."
But Mr. Abtan said he is not a sellout. He's a realist. Last Sunday, he was able to verify talk of H&M's imminent arrival to the strip when, ironically, one of the company's employees came to pick out a little something for herself from his funky store -- at grossly discounted moving-sale prices.
She told him the firm had taken over the building that used to house Tortilla Flats, along with a handful of small businesses, and it planned to build a new three-storey store on the site.
Tortilla Flats manager Duane Feeley said the restaurant was forced out of its space just east of Spadina last April when landlords Living Property Management wanted to raise its rent from $37.50 a square foot to between $75 and $100 a square foot.
"Rent is becoming too high for the strip," he said. "It is becoming the new Yorkville.
"I think if H&M comes to Queen Street, it will become an outdoor mall."
Speaking by phone from Geneva, H&M spokesman Christian Bagnoud wouldn't confirm the company's plans, but enthusiastically endorsed Queen West as being where the company wanted to amplify a Toronto presence that already includes tony Bloor Street West and malls like the Eaton Centre, Yorkdale and Sherway Gardens.
"We don't go to areas that we don't think are the best. Queen West is a good location," he said.
Still, in Mr. Abtan's view, the appeal may be short-lived. "What people are saying, " he said, "is that the street is changing into that corporate Yorkdale type of atmosphere -- that it is losing its uniqueness."
He was perched on a stool that afforded him an unobstructed view of his fluid subject. Outside, the "crazies" commingled with the corporate kingpins, all of them clutching Styrofoam cups of coffee. Mr. Abtan pointed out the diversity and worried that with more gentrification, the area will lose its character.
Hip seems already to be losing the battle to the forces of homogeneity. Mr. Abtan said the rumour mill is again churning, this time with news that Urban Outfitters is moving in on the south side of Queen West, at Augusta.
If true, it means that the commercialization of Queen is migrating farther westward, well past Spadina and into territory that, until last year's opening of an American Apparel store, has remained safely beyond reach of the multinationals.
Several blocks west of Bathurst at the Kama Kazi clothing boutique, owners Debra and Fred Antwi said they believe they're in the new sweet spot.
"People are looking for the old Queen West vibe," Mr. Antwi said. "They come in here and say, 'Oh, here it is, we thought it was gone.' "
Still, cities and their streets lead organic lives, subject to change. And so Queen Street will evolve as well its grasp on cool, Edward Majkut said as he walked out of Circa Forty with a bag of clothing Mr. Abtan had sold him for less than $12. He knew Queen Street before it was Queen Street and now he is seeing it at the tail end.
"Centres of cool have a short lifespan," Mr. Majkut said. "They are in places where no one wants, initially, to go, and then they are where everyone wants to go and so they cease being cool.
"That, my friend, is life."