NOT ZO N ED FOR D A N CI N G: A C OMPREHE N SIVE R EVIEW O Not Zoned F EN TERTAI For Dancing N ME N T I N D OW N TOW N T ORO N TO A Comprehensive Review of Entertainment in Downtown Toronto ANNA WYNVEEN, BRENTON NADER, CAROLYN ROWAN, CHRIS HILBRECHT, KYLE MILLER Not Zoned For Dancing: A Comprehensive Review of Entertainment in Downtown Toronto This report is the result of four months of work by five graduate students in the Master of Science in Planning program at the University of Toronto. This report was produced for an outside client, the Office of the Chief Planner at the City of Toronto, and the students received no financial compensation. The research team comprises Anna Wynveen, Brenton Nader, Carolyn Rowan, Chris Hilbrecht, and Kyle Miller. The contents of this report are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA 4.0). You are free to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and remix, transform, and build upon the material, for any purpose, even commercially. You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. © Anna Wynveen, Brenton Nader, Carolyn Rowan, Chris Hilbrecht, and Kyle Miller, 2014. All images copyright Chris Hilbrecht and Kyle Miller. Contact: [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] VIP SUMMARY There can be few things that are more innately associ- Our analysis reveals that, despite the incredible growth of ated with the idea of a functional and fun city than en- residential and commercial populations in the downtown tertainment. From a flourishing theatre scene to vibrant core, entertainment uses are actually migrating west and nightlife, entertainment is often a benchmark of a city’s north of the downtown. Pushed and pulled out of the core livability. But, despite this importance, entertainment as a by land use conflicts and market forces, the downtown specific component of urban design and planning tends entertainment sector is undergoing a process of extraor- to be overlooked or taken for granted. Usually conflated dinary transformation. In order to promote a healthy and with culture, recreation, or leisure, entertainment has not vibrant entertainment sector downtown and elsewhere in received its due consideration as a critical part of urban the city, we make a number of recommendations aimed infrastructure. Even the term “entertainment” itself is am- at mitigating potential conflicts and granting entertain- biguously defined in an academic and professional liter- ment planning a more elevated position within the tradi- ature that disagrees on some of the most fundamental tional municipal planning framework. A summary of our points and yet, by its very existence, acknowledges the recommendations is found at the end of this report. growing importance of entertainment planning. This report, the first comprehensive examination of the state of entertainment in Toronto’s downtown, reveals that the sector is in flux. The intensification of residential and commercial development in the downtown core is placing strain on entertainment resources, and creating a discordant relationship between these often conflicting land uses. At the same time, tastes are changing, and the sector is constantly adapting to address new challenges and opportunities. By first sketching a definition of enter- tainment that narrows from the holistic to the functional, our report creates a framework for an analysis of stake- holder interviews, twenty years of quantitative data, policy approaches within Toronto, and best practices around the world. 2 3 TRENDS CONTEXT 20 entertaining the masses (entertainment in cities) 10 PEER setting the scene 24from warehouse PRESSURE to where-it’s-at (toronto’s 12 evolving entertainment district) 54 RECOMMEND- speak easy peer pressure ATIONS (a review of best practices) (defining entertainement) 28trending in toronto (a land use and cultural planning policy review) 64 34 summary of recommendations nightclubs in toronto (a planning case study) 68 41 appendix what’s going on? (statistical + references cartographic analysis) list of key stakeholders list of interviewees word on the street (interviews) 4 PROLOGUE Surrounded by towering condominiums, the Alexander Street Parkette is a simple, green oasis amidst the bustle of life in downtown Toronto. Sparsely landscaped but still sheltered from the traffic and human congestion of nearby Yonge Street, the parkette is a popular outdoor extension of the adjacent Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. In 1994, this small, independent theatre company moved its operations to 12 Alexander Street. Always innovative, Buddies’ founders began fundraising for their theatre productions by offering patrons the option to enjoy drinks at the lobby bar before and after performances. This initiative, which is known as “Buddies After Hours,” has become a successful entertainment fixture in the Church-Wellesley neighbourhood, attracting people from across the city. Featuring a DJ on Saturday nights, Buddies After Hours is a well-known dancing venue, with festivities lasting late into the night and patrons using the adjacent parkette as an outdoor space for after-hours entertainment. This would be fine, except that Buddies in Bad Times is not zoned for dancing. The City of Toronto owns the theatre (which it leases to Buddies) and the adjacent parkette, which are collectively zoned as Open Space. This restrictive zoning category contains a special exemption for Buddies to operate as a theatre—Entertainment Place of Assembly—which does not permit dancing. The theatre regularly receives noise complaints relating to loud music and raised voices late at night—underscoring the reality that entertainment uses, no matter how organically they may evolve, often conflict with other land uses and clash with municipal policies. Under these circumstances, the theatre has become emblematic of a wider challenge facing Toronto: the turbulent relationship between a densifying downtown and the entertainment services that are routinely considered critical to fostering vibrant urban life. “ToronTo’s global idenTITY HAS CHANGED DRA- MATICALLY. WHEREAS PEOPLE USED TO THINK WE WERE A SLEEPY, BORING CITY, NOW WE ARE CON- sidered ‘Vegas of THE NORTh.’ BECAUSE OF THE RESTAURANTS AND THE NIGHTLIFE, PEOPLE ACTUALLY HAVE A GOOD TIME HERE. TORONTO HAS A VIBE AND A SCENE, WHEREAS BEFORE IT WAS MONTREAL THAT WAS CONSIDERED THE COOL CA- NADIAN CITY. WE HAVE NOW SURPASSED MONTREAL FIVE TIMES OVER WITH THE NUMBER OF OPTIONS AND THE ENERGY ON THE WEEKENDS. ANY NIGHT OF THE WEEK, There’s someTHING TO DO HERE. IT’s imporTANT THAT THE CITY REALIZES THAT THE RESTAURANT AND NIGHTLIFE SCENE IS A BIG PART OF TORONTo’s culTURAL IDENTITy.” Buddies in Bad Times Theatre - ZARK FATAH* 12 Alexander Street 6 *For details about our interviewees, see the Appendix, page 77. 7 CON 8 TEXT9 OUR STUDY The Office of the Chief Planner enlisted us to explore these concerns and the role of entertainment—in its many forms—in Toronto’s downtown core, recognizing SETTING THE SCENE that entertainment can serve both as an important asset that contributes to an area’s attractiveness Downtown Toronto is undergoing a nearly and livability, and as a potential source of conflict unprecedented phase of growth and development. for the dense residential communities springing into The influx of residential and commercial tenants into existence. Our report explores how entertainment has the downtown core has been tremendous, and the evolved in Toronto over the last twenty years, from the City of Toronto has responded by launching a series early 1990s until the present day. of studies to examine the impact of this growth on municipal infrastructure. This report forms one small In this report we investigate potential conflicts part of this ongoing investigation, collectively known between entertainment and residential uses, and we as Comprehensive to the Core. Comprehensive to recommend policy directions (and the further research the Core seeks to understand how infrastructure, necessary to inform this policy) that will help to foster services, and amenities in the downtown core—a lively downtown entertainment while minimizing 16-square kilometer area bounded by Lake Ontario, conflicts with residents. Our report contains a Bathurst Street, Dupont Street, and the Rosedale definition of entertainment, a brief literature and policy Valley/Don River —are keeping up with review, cartographic and statistical analyses, and best the area’s population growth. The study will be used practices from cities that we believe are leading the to develop a planning framework for the downtown way toward creating vibrant entertainment sectors core that will have as its objective the maintenance that operate harmoniously with other land uses. of a livable community and vital destination (City of Throughout the report, we list our recommendations Toronto, 2014). for how Toronto can ensure an adequate provision of entertainment in the downtown core while In 2014, a planning report entitled Trends and Issues simultaneously mitigating conflict. in the Intensification of Downtown revealed that, between 2006 and 2011, entertainment, nightlife, and A key takeaway from our research is the ambiguous culture declined in importance among the reasons that relationship between entertainment and planning residents identified for choosing to live downtown (City that shapes so much municipal policy in Toronto of Toronto, 2014b). These trends, which may represent and around the world. Planning perspectives on a looming challenge for entertainment planning in entertainment range from seeing it as a resource to Toronto, raise a number of interesting questions: How be exploited for economic gain (producing the sort should the City maintain a vibrant entertainment scene of urban vitality that attracts the creative class) to in a downtown core that is becoming increasingly seeking ways to curtail the nuisances it causes (in the dense? How should conflicts between residential and form of noise and violence, for example).