[URBAN NOTE] "From Bar Volo to Zipperz, Toronto’s businesses uproot as condos sprout up"

[rfmcdonald]

Bar Volo's relocation to a Church Street location, driven by condo development on its Yonge Street location, is hardly rare. The Toronto Star took a look at it and other businesses driven from their homes.

As multi-storey condos sprout up across the city, some long-time businesses have been uprooted.

Between January 2015 and June of this year, 97 condo projects were started, for a total of 26,750 units, according to Altus Data Solutions, a provider of real estate data and market intelligence.

Inevitably, some businesses have been caught in the crossfire of the residential development boom.

The list includes a bar beloved by beer connoisseurs, a Leslieville diner known for its western sandwiches and a downtown hostel once voted the best on the continent.

An influx of about 100,000 people per year and a pressure to build upward instead of outward are reshaping the retail and commercial landscape, said Matti Siemiatycki, a professor of urban planning at the University of Toronto.

“Those pressures together are creating a perfect storm that is challenging for existing businesses, an environment where change is happening very quickly and unsettling a lot of the current businesses, many of which have been there for a long time,” he said.