Toronto’s Model Railroad Club Closing Down To Make Way For Condos

[current]

75 years of work will be dismantled - Toronto Star article:
Toronto’s Model Railroad Club Closing Down To Make Way For Condos


Published 1 hours, 16 minutes ago
November 1 2012
Wendy Gillis
Staff Reporter

...But after 66 years in the Liberty Market building — a former armaments factory — the club announced this week it’s being forced out by condo development. The move will require members to dismantle “hundreds of thousands of hours” of work on the intricate model constructed over the organization’s 75-year history. “So much of it will be lost,” said MacLean. “It’s like doing a sculpture. How do you tear it apart and then rebuild it?”

Lifetime Development, owner of the building at 171 East Liberty St., is in the process of getting approval for a condo development, one of several new buildings in an area that’s already played host to substantial redevelopment in recent years. Like so many growing areas in the city, the push for new often kicks out the old — in many cases, distinct places that create diversity and character. “Another great Toronto treasure lost to development,” wrote user Bill Harford on the Model Railroad Club of Toronto’s Facebook page. “I will be sad to see it go.”

A battle between new development and history arose last year when the Canadian Air and Space Museum was kicked out of its Downsview Park home to make way for an ice rink. “It is important to have as much diversity in a neighbourhood as you can,” said Glen Murray, president and CEO of the Canadian Urban Institute. “But the reality is this kind of change has been happening for many years, not just in the recent boom. It’s just the way of the world.”...

...Lynn Clay, executive director of the Liberty Village Business Improvement Area, said change has and will continue to affect the area. “We are now a work-play-live neighbourhood. The reality is that condos are being developed. And it’s good to have a nice balance, and places where people can work, they can play, they can live all in one community.” But ideally, Clay wants to see the club stay in Liberty Village because of the area’s historic ties to the railroad. She’s seeking a “supportive property owner that can find an unusual space that would be just perfect for these guys.” MacLean said the club is not upset at the building’s owners, who have allowed them to stay for years at low rent. They’re just upset about having to undo their “work of art.”

“That’s the heartbreaking thing,” he said. The club will hold final demonstration performances in December and February to mark Christmas and their 75th anniversary as a club, prior to their move in April. All proceeds will go toward the cost of rebuilding the model.

Is something interesting or special being squeezed out of your neighbourhood because of development? We want to hear from you. Email wgillis@thestar.ca

Read more: http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/arti...way-for-condos

[MysticMcGoo]

The bubble persists!

[Mollywood]

Oh that's sad! It's the nice, little surprises like this, that make a city interesting. I hope there is some way this can be saved and moved somewhere the public can see it.

[Ramako]

The Roundhouse Rail Museum should give them some space.

[vid]

Thunder Bay lost its model railway club to condos too. What a discouraging trend.

[Mollywood]

Originally Posted by Ramako

The Roundhouse Rail Museum should give them some space.

The Roundhouse Museum has no space to spare. Just recently they have been kicked out of 2 of their bays, so Hydro could expand its station. They don't even have nearly enough space to display their exhibits now. I'd love to see Leon's go somewhere else. It's a bad location for a furniture store. It should be strictly a tourism zone.

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Info on the condo development - blogTo articles:
Could Liberty Market Condo Lead to a Retail Exodus?



Posted by Chris Bateman / OCTOBER 29, 2012

The developer of the Liberty Market Tower, a proposed condo in Liberty Village that's drawn the ire of a group of local residents, says he doesn't expect to break ground for at least five years. According to Brian Brown, Vice President of Lifetime Developments, the company is agreeing new leases with the current tenants of the historic warehouse buildings on East Liberty Street, including Casalife furniture. "We really don't have a plan or a timeline for this development; it's really a matter of getting the approvals so we have the option of doing something some time in the future when the opportunity makes sense to us," Brown said on the phone Friday afternoon. It's possible the later start date might alleviate some of the fears of a local campaign group who expressed concern last week about the additional strain new condos would place on the area's roads and infrastructure in an open letter to councillor Mike Layton. Layton himself worries that Liberty Village's limited number of access roads could prove detrimental to the overall health of the neighbourhood as more high-rise residential buildings are built in the coming years...

Read more: http://www.blogto.com/city/2012/10/c...omment-1377104

Residents Rally to Save Liberty Village from New Condo

Posted by Chris Bateman / OCTOBER 25, 2012

A proposed new condo building is causing a stir among a group of local residents of Liberty Village who say the planned 32-storey tower is unwelcome in the area. Liberty Market Tower project is still in the pipes, but it could mean the demolition or substantial re-working of historic parts of the Liberty Market Building complex at 171 East Liberty Street. Lifetime Developments - the company behind the Yorkville Four Seasons hotel and the Liberty Market Building itself - envisions retail units at street level, six levels of office space, and twenty-five floors of live-work apartments in the building, which is of comparable size to others under construction in the area.

After renderings of the proposed structure were released last week, worried residents started a petition on Facebook to voice their concerns. The Liberty Market Building itself is a fixture in the neighbourhood and home to start-ups and small businesses as well as restaurants like Origin Liberty Village, Merci Mon Ami and the numerous residents of the Liberty Market laneway. They've done a lot over the past decade to move the neighbourhood forward so perhaps it's not surprising that they want to continue to expand upon a good thing. Perhaps as a sign of things to come, the landlord recently terminated the lease of KingWest Fitness, a gym that occupied one of the units at the centre of the proposal...

Read more: http://www.blogto.com/city/2012/10/r...rom_new_condo/

[AndrewJM3D]

Residents Rally to Save Liberty Village from New Condo


LOL, the residents who also live in new condos, some on locations of former historical buildings? Good luck with that. Perhaps they're mad that LV is getting a building that actually looks nice and won't be in the Pugly Awards list like the rest of them have been.

[isaidso]

This building does seem to kill the atmosphere in that retail strip. If they need to put a condo on top, they need to do a far better job maintaining the feel of that warehouse building.