The Matador club dodged an expropriation bullet on Tuesday. The Toronto Parking Authority backed off.
Here's the take of John Barber, The Globe and Mail's Toronto columnist:
The decision will permit the beloved booze can to decline into the mud without civic intervention, unless and until somebody discovers a positive way to save it for sure.
That's possible. The TPA once bought the Royal Cinema on College Street, one of the last neighbourhood movie houses in Toronto, hoping to turn it into a garage. Local protest forced a change in plans, and the Royal has re-emerged better than ever, adding state-of-the-art digital editing services by day to the usual evening repertory. It's a classic Jane Jacobs success story. So there's hope yet for the Matador.
In the meantime, the sober Torontonian is left wondering how such an obscure public body ever contemplated taking such Draconian action against a private, albeit shady, business. How can creating parking spaces in a city that officially discourages such development be considered a public good, one so desirable as to justify expropriation? Or is the parking issue just a beard to disguise stealthy gentrification?
Just imagine College St. without the Royal. I would argue that it wouldn't be the hot strip that it is right now had the TPA originally gotten its way.
Barber is right. Destroying a cool old building like the Matador for parking makes no sense -- unless the point would be to sell the land to a developer at some future point.