Photo Essay: Development vs. Heritage and Local Character in Kensington-Chinatown
For the past five years or so, I’ve lived in the College and Spadina area in Toronto, in between Chinatown and Kensington Market. My neighbourhood is vibrant, diverse, well-served by transit, and contains iconic Toronto restaurants like Sneaky Dee’s and Rol San (a personal favourite).
But these establishments are now under threat: Real-estate developers have proposed tearing down these city staples in order to pave the way for new buildings. However, these buildings might offer tangible benefits for my neighbourhood; the developer at the Rol San lot, for example, has recently committed to providing 20 to 22 units of affordable housing. While that may not be a large number, this type of housing is nonetheless desperately needed. According to the 2016 Neighbourhood Profile for Kensington-Chinatown, 48.1% of private households in the area occupy unaffordable housing, (i.e., more than 30% of household income is spent on housing), which is well above the Toronto average of 36.6%. In this context, these proposed redevelopments put my neighbourhood at the forefront of a classic urban policy challenge: How does a city develop without compromising its heritage and character?
While they may not be officially heritage-listed properties, Sneaky Dee’s and Rol San are undeniably beloved fixtures in my neighbourhood and in Toronto in general. Take Sneaky Dee’s, which is pictured above. It first opened in 1987 at 562 Bloor Street before moving to its current location at 431 College Street. Since then, the dive bar’s stature has only grown. Sneaky Dee’s appears in the graphic novel series Scott Pilgrim, and Arcade Fire even thanked the bar in their acceptance speech for a Juno award; Danny Chau, an American journalist, went as far as to describe Sneaky Dee’s as “a civic landmark.” When the news broke in September 2020 about the proposed redevelopment (a 13-storey mixed-use building), the headline on Exclaim spoke volumes: “Toronto Is Already Mourning the Potential Closing of Sneaky Dee’s.”
Rol San (pictured above) is similarly revered. According to the Toronto Star, the beloved dim sum restaurant “has been a staple of Chinese food in the downtown core since 1994.” Former Toronto Raptors player Serge Ibaka called Rol San one of his favourite restaurants in the city, and the Raptors even included a shot of the restaurant’s neon signage in its 2018–2019 introduction video (see 5:30). The restaurant has received international recognition as well: The Washington Post recommends Rol San in its city guide of Toronto. Unsurprisingly, when a developer submitted an application in August 2019 to build a 13-storey mixed-use building on 315–325 Spadina Avenue (Rol San is located at 323 Spadina Avenue), Councillor Mike Layton decried the potential end of the restaurant as the loss of an “institution.”
The proposed redevelopments at these sites have understandably stoked concern about how they might affect the character of the neighbourhood, but Sneaky Dee’s and Rol San are not the first neighbourhood staples to be sacrificed for a new tower. For example, my neighbourhood also used to be home to the Hotel Waverley and The Silver Dollar Room (as pictured above). Built in 1900 at 484 Spadina Avenue as an upscale establishment, the Hotel Waverley had descended into “a vicious and unsightly flophouse” in recent years, but it was nonetheless one of Toronto’s oldest hotels by the time of its demolition in 2018. The Silver Dollar Room was a music venue added to the hotel in 1958, and well-known artists like Bob Dylan, The Barenaked Ladies, and Death From Above 1979 performed on its stage. Both the Hotel Waverley and Silver Dollar Room were torn down to make way for The Waverley (pictured below), a new 15-storey development that is near completion.
However, the Silver Dollar Room will eventually be restored in The Waverley, in large part because Toronto City Council designated the music venue as a heritage site. City Council was able to pursue this course of action because of Part IV, Section 29(1) of the Ontario Heritage Act — which gives all municipalities in the province the authority to designate properties within their jurisdiction as heritage sites. For a property to become a heritage site, however, it must meet the criteria set in Ontario Regulation 9/06. More specifically, this means that a property must have either design/physical value, historical/associative value, or contextual value. In the case of the Silver Dollar Room, City Council determined that it had both associative and contextual value.
With that said, one should not begin to believe that Toronto has the final word when it comes to the fate of Sneaky Dee’s and Rol San. It does not. As Councillor Layton’s tweet makes clear, the City’s decision-making power on developments and heritage designations is ultimately limited. Indeed, even if the City were to designate Sneaky Dee’s and Rol San as heritage sites, Section 34(1) of the Ontario Heritage Act establishes that the designations could be appealed at the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal — the administrative tribunal that acts as the final arbiter on land use and heritage conservation matters in Ontario. In this respect, Toronto appears to be very much a “creature of the province.”
Overall, the future of Sneaky Dee’s and Rol San is as complicated as it is unclear. What is apparent, however, is that there is a great deal of tension between two legitimate needs in my neighbourhood: the need for further development, and the need to conserve community heritage and character. At the start of my essay, I asked how a city can address both needs. If anything, the examples of Sneaky Dee’s and Rol San (as well as the Hotel Waverley and the Silver Dollar Room) show that there are likely no easy answers to this urban policy dilemma.
