[URBAN NOTE] On next year's shift of the Toronto Fringe Club to Scadding Court

[rfmcdonald]

blogTO was one of the several news sites to note the impending shift of the Toronto Fringe Club from its location nestled between the buildings of Honest Ed's down to Bathurst and Dundas, down to the Scadding Court Community Centre. The Toronto Star's Karen Fricker has more.

Following a seventh and final festive year in Honest Ed’s Alley, the Fringe Club — the indie theatre festival’s social headquarters — will be located from 2017 on at Scadding Court Community Centre at Bathurst and Dundas Sts., which will be transformed, in the Fringe’s words, into an “urban playground.”

The move is necessary because of the upcoming closure of Honest Ed’s discount store, part of the transformation of the southwest corner of Bloor and Bathurst into a new large-scale commercial-residential project.

For Fringe executive director Kelly Straughan, the move is also an inevitable result of the 28-year-old festival’s ongoing growth: “one step further” in the progress from its early social headquarters at the Tranzac Club on Brunswick Ave. to the parking lot behind Honest Ed’s where the club has been held since 2010 and now to Scadding Court, which include a large parking lot and a dry pad (in winter, an ice rink).

This larger location — the biggest footprint ever for a Fringe Club — will mean an expansion of its beer gardens, which after dark become a major hangout for the arts community or, as Straughan calls them, “hardcore Fringers.” Shipping containers will double as the bars themselves, an approach that builds on Scadding Court’s Market 707 along Dundas St., at which community vendors sell food out of converted containers.

Straughan underlines that the move keeps the club relatively close to the festival’s Annex origins and on the Bathurst St. corridor where its major traditional venues (Factory and Tarragon theatres and Theatre Passe Muraille) are located, and that Scadding Court also resonates with the Fringe’s identity as a community festival.

NOW Toronto's theatre critic Glenn Sumi notes the change that will occur.

The current Fringe Club, located right on Bloor West, fits right into the student-fed liveliness of the Annex. While Dundas West is becoming more popular – and hey, there’s a 24-hour Mickey Dee’s there – it doesn’t have the same vibrancy. For now, anyway.

It’ll also be harder to get to by subway, although there are streetcars on Bathurst, Dundas and Queen.

The ever-popular beer gardens will take up residence in the SCCC parking lot, and the outdoor hockey rink will house an arts market, complete with performance stage. There’s no word yet on whether those shipping container-style eateries along the south side of Dundas will take part or extend their hours. They’ve done a lot to transform the neighbourhood.

The festival is looking to integrate the Scadding Court Drama Interact program for youth and young adults who are physically or developmentally challenged into the fest. And it will be working with Scadding Court’s Newcomer Integration Program to provide work and volunteer opportunities. All good things.