Waiting With Bated Breath...

St. Patrick's market makeover

Remaking a 100-year-old Queen W. market

By Paul Terefenko 

 

It’s been more than 20 years since the city signed a deal to let Market Inc. use the tiny St. Patrick Market on Queen St. across from the Citytv building. And after a couple of years hobbling along with few to no occupants, then total shutdown, the nearly 100-year-old market is being readied for a redo.
“Basically we’re going to reopen as a market offering of different types of foods – both raw and ready to eat,” says owner George Friedman. He notes that there’s been a shift.
“The neighbourhood continues to evolve and be a mix of transient commercial traffic, but there’s also a lot more residential traffic,” says Friedman.
He acknowledges seeing a certain upscale shift for the modest market, which was a chicken slaughterhouse until 1988, beyond his previous concept of the market space as home to vendors like Ben and Jerry’s.

That’s probably not ideal news for a strip that’s lost two convenience stores and faces the closing of 16-year-old Square Fruit Market further west at Queen and Euclid. Upscale means out of reach for residents of the 17 Toronto Community Housing buildings in the vicinity.
The current plan still involves leasing to tenants, whom Friedman is still in the process of finding. He mentions plans for local chef cooking demos, but doesn’t specify requirements for particular shops. He does guarantee, “It’s food and beverage. No clothing, jewellery or stuff like that.”
Well, one should hope not. The 50-year lease Friedman pulled off two decades ago specified an “exciting retail mini food market,” including a grocer, butcher, baker, etc. The city document outlining these conditions and mentioning the creation of “ambiance similar to the St. Lawrence Market” happens to be part of a dispute over the lease between the city and 238 Queen West.
“The legal issues are not resolved,” says local councillor Adam Vaughan. “There’s still a dispute over whether or not the terms are being honoured.”
Vaughan hasn’t seen Friedman’s reno proposal, so he’s in a holding pattern. “When [the market] reopens it will be re-evaluted,” says Vaughan hinting at those conditions originally envisioning a proper market in an area he says is becoming a “food desert.”
If Friedman makes good on his original deal, that will be the end, says Vaughan. If not, “we’ll have to make a decision how to move forward.”
But Friedman says his plan has nothing to do with city pressure and shies away from St. Lawrence comparisons, even for the new vision of St. Patrick Market.
“You can’t have the varieties of larger markets. It’s not St. Lawrence, but it was never intended to be,” he says.
Sure fooled the city.