Andre Bermon –
A neglected corner of the Downtown East is about to have its time in the sun.
Late last year the Toronto Public Library announced it had acquired 339 Queen Street East, the old Marty Millionaire building, to house a new district library branch. The investment will replace the aging St. Lawrence branch at 171 The Esplanade.
Built in 1907, the three-storey, brick-clad Queen Street building was home to several family-owned retail businesses and anchored what was once a prominent commercial corridor. Its next iteration as a public library (a precursor to future growth in the neighbourhood) is exactly what the Moss Park/Corktown neighbourhood needs.
Not long ago, 339 Queen East and a dozen or so adjacent properties west of Parliament Street were the short-lived headquarters of WE Charity, the infamous social enterprise of the Kielburger brothers. Many small businesses that once operated there were systematically evicted and replaced with offices and workers toiling for the Kielburger cause. Locals jokily called it “We-ville”.
In 2020 a political scandal erupted between WE Charity and the Trudeau government over $900 million worth of student grant money. The fallout was quick and the collapse of the Kielburger charity empire led to the liquidation of the charity’s properties in Moss Park.
We Charity sold 339 Queen East to Generation Capital, a Thomson family wealth fund, for $36 million around 2021. (The amount the city paid is not yet public.) The abrupt exit of the Kielburgers turned the intersection into a dead zone. Besides a few operating businesses, many preceding We Charity, Queen and Parliament became another extension of the moribund Queen East strip.
The announcement, therefore, of a library offering four times the space of The Esplanade location with the added programming heft and services of a district branch will be a major turning point for the community. Not only will it bring much-needed foot traffic to the area, but the installation of a public library is the kind of soft infrastructure a growing neighbourhood wants.
Residential tower applications, including one adjacent to 339 Queen East, promise to house thousands of new people. The Shoppers Drug Mart that closed on the southeast side of Queen and Parliament will soon be reopened at Queen and Ontario Street, with a grocery store on site also likely.
Tricon, a developer, is close to finishing a two-tower project that includes a 1000-seat music venue, and a small city-run parkette is being installed. (One Properties, a developer that owns a parcel of land adjacent to Tricon as well as the entire southeast block of Queen and Parliament, is currently in financial peril.)
One day, Queen East and Sherbourne is supposed to have a subway stop, part of the 15-kilometre Ontario Line running from Exhibition Place to the now closed Ontario Science Centre. And the revitalized John Innes Recreation Centre on Sherbourne Street north of Queen is scheduled to be completed in late 2029.
Gentrification can be a double-edged sword – a boon for newcomers, but a driver of displacement and instability for existing communities. The bridge has written plenty about Queen Street East being the north/ south demarcation line between the haves and the have-nots.
The Moss Park Apartment Complex, which houses a significant low-income population, needs to be included in future planning of the area. That could mean proposing its eventual revitalization, perhaps similar to what occurred in Regent Park.
Ward 13 (Toronto Centre) Councillor Chris Moise and his $3 million community benefits contribution to the new Moss Park library warrants praise for helping secure a long-overdue investment in a historically underserved community. The future library will mark a turning point for the neighbourhood, serving as a cornerstone for renewal, learning and human connection.
Unfortunately, in this case a community’s gain will be another’s loss when the St. Lawrence neighbourhood sees its current library branch close on The Esplanade. It may not seem far to the new location, yet the community’s disappointment is palpable following years of evolving commitments across two proposed locations.
If there is a way to satisfy the neighbourhood’s loss, then TPL and/or the councillor’s office should come forward with ideas.
More on that next issue.
