Caledonia Towns on the Park

We've been interested in the progress of this development since we moved into the area. To be honest, we were somewhat skeptical of the location (great to be by the park, but it seems a bit close to this already busy street) and as it started to build up, we weren't digging the exterior choices.

BUT - after visiting the site of Minto, the developer behind this project, it was cool to see how diligent they've been with keeping people updated. You don't see that from a lot of other developers and often you have to scour the internet or casually walk by the development regularly to try to get some information (both of which we have done in the past when we were house hunting).

We especially liked Minto's blog, which featured some photos of the interior in it's current stage. Looks like they're doing their best to not hide anything from buyers. Or at least appear not to :)

So, although we're not quite yet sold on the end product (we're gonna blame it on the weather right now, just in case we're eating our words later), we're giving the company some credit for the way they've handled their marketing.

We'd love to hear from anyone who knows more about this new area and if you've purchased, welcome to the neighbourhood!

Friends of Earlscourt Park

"Working together to better our vibrant neighbourhood by bettering Earlscourt Park - one swing, one tree and one picnic table at a time." That's the slogan for the newly formed group, Friends of Earlscourt Park, a volunteer group that is working towards all around improving this west end park with new gren space and community events.

We used the park a lot over the summer (beach volleyball? Awesome!) and are hoping to put on our skates and try out the rink for the first time, that is whenever Toronto decides to be Canadian again and have a proper winter. It's great that there are people out there taking the initiative to build a community for the park and we look forward to hear more about their plans for 2013.

We also think the FOEP logo is really cute :)

Stockyards Development

While paying a visit to our new favourite store, Home Depot (or as our Portuguese friend's dad would say "Home Deeps"), we realized that we didn't know much, ok anything, about the Stockyards development across the street.  So we got our Google on at home later and learned about the new commercial space being put up.

Trinity Development Group is the developer of the site and focuses primarily on suburban power centres.  We'll let the video of the proposed plans do all the talkin'.  Although, we suggest turning off the volume because the cheesy classical music kinda kills it.


Admittedly, our first reaction was "Heck ya, a Target!". And then we considered the pros and cons about the development, such as:

PROS:
- New life to an otherwise dead stretch of land
- Access to tons of big name stores

CONS:
- The suburban feel
- More traffic

If they can put in restaurants, a movie theatre, or some kind of entertainment area that would keep people there for a length of time in one visit, this could be a great addition to the neighbourhood. An example of this is the Quartier Dix30 development that was put in Quebec. It is currently Canada's largest lifestyle commercial centre which was designed to emulate an urban or downtown shopping experience with boutiques.

Waddaya think?