[URBAN NOTE] "Skyrocketing commercial rents purge reluctant artists from Toronto’s west end"

[rfmcdonald]

Murray Whyte at the Toronto Star reports on what is, frankly, terrible news from my neighbourhood, a place where I would like to continue to be able to live.

The array of sticky notes on the wall above the desk in Sandra Rechico’s west end studio lay out what lies ahead in stark black letters on hot pink: “MOVE,” “SELL,” “TOSS,” “STORE,” “HOME.”

Everything here will be labelled with one or other, but the conspicuous absence of “STAY” is most important. On September 30, Rechico, along with a couple of dozen other tenants at 224 Wallace Ave, were given eviction notices by Bilnia Inc., the property’s owner, giving them 30 days to vacate. The reason: To make way for Ubisoft, the France-based video gaming corporation, to expand its footprint in the building.

“Commercial spaces for people like us seem to be over in this city,” shrugs Rechico, an artist and professor at the University of Guelph. She’s sitting here, amid the boxes and garbage bags in her soon-to-be-former studio, with a group of neighbours in the same boat: Mark Binks, a photographer; Roula Partheniou and Michael Antkowiak, both artists; and Gideon Naf, whose independent publishing operation sits in the studio next door. “We have — literally — metric tonnes of equipment in there,” says Naf, gloomily. “We’re too bulky to be a travelling circus.”

Painful though it may be, Bilnia’s abrupt notice is perfectly legal (the company did not respond to a request for comment). According to the scant regulations governing commercial real estate, 30 days is the minimum requirement for notice to vacate. The landlord is under no legal onus to provide cause, and no regulation restricts the amount a property owner can charge for its spaces.