The Canary District is underway, and before you get riled about this being yet one more derivative place name, lionizing a foreign capital instead of affirming our own city, take heart that this particular Canary has nothing to do with the London wharf.
This new 20-acre neighbourhood, the first phase of which will be completed for the Pan Am Games in 2015, and that will ultimately include 2,300 residential units, 60,000 square feet of retail with its own new streetcar spur, is named for that little abandoned diner,
The Canary on Cherry.
"We were playing around with a lot of different names internally," says Jason Lester, president of Dundee REIT. "It was where weary truck drivers what would come out of downtown Toronto, taking dirt from the [construction of] the financial core to to the Leslie Spit, this is where they'd stop for their morning coffee and breakfast. When the Distillery District became Hollywood North for about 12 years, it was filmmakers" who hung out there, he says, adding that ultimately it was his idea to name the huge development after the little diner.
The renewed interest in the area has meant a renewed interest in the diner itself. They'll be fixing up the diner's exterior in the lead-up to the games, and Lester figures ultimately Waterfront Toronto will acquire it and give it a new purpose.
Phase II of the development will be marketed in 2014-15 and depending on sales, may begin construction as early as 2016, with potential occupancy by 2018.
Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Jason Lester
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