[URBAN NOTE] "No hard feelings for owners who lost store to Queen West gentrification"

[rfmcdonald]

The Globe and Mail's Marcus Gee tells the story of a Queen West convenience store now closing down on account of the gentrification of its neighbourhood.

Until Thursday, Sandy Chen and Henry Zhou ran a convenience store on Toronto’s Queen Street West. As the neighbourhood around them went from seedy to artsy to trendy, their Queen’s Grocery & Variety at the corner of Queen and Lisgar streets remained stubbornly the same.

Year after year, day after day, they stood sentry behind the store counter, cheerfully hawking (as the sign outside proclaimed) “pops, snacks, ice creams, ATM, TTC, Lotto” and other necessities of urban living.

But cities are always evolving and even Queen’s Grocery couldn’t resist forever. Real estate values have soared on Queen, one of the hottest streets on the continent. Someone bought the building from their old landlord last spring. Faced with a doubling of their rent, the couple, now in their 50s, decided to wind up the business that sustained them for 17 years.

As they prepared to close on Wednesday, a handwritten sign announced “Everything must go!!!” Inside the store, already half empty, Ms. Chen was slashing prices and giving lots of stuff away free. The sound of hammering and drilling came through the wall as renovators encroached. A contractor who looked in said the space would become (what else?) a vegetarian restaurant.

It is a process that is underway on city streets from London to Chicago to Shanghai. Rundown downtown neighbourhoods are reviving. New money and new blood is rushing in. The local hardware becomes a yoga studio, the greasy spoon a coffee bar. This stretch of Queen used to boast two car-wash joints, now priced out and long gone.