The newly minted Gloucester Residents’ Association will hold a public meeting at The 519 on July 29 at 8pm. Organizers say that Lisa McCann, one of the owners, has promised to attend.

In the meantime, a planned meeting between the developers and the board of the Church Wellesley Village BIA has been rescheduled, and according to manager David Wootton, the BIA has not yet taken a position on the development, or indeed decided whether it will take a position at all.

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That’s how architects at RAW design are describing a proposed Church St condo that one local resident called a “25-storey black death star.” A Thursday evening meeting at The 519 attracted about 100 people, many of whom live in the 35 low-rise residential units that could be torn down and replaced by a mixed-use high-rise development running from Dundonald to Gloucester along Church, on land owned by a company called Church 18 Holdings Inc. Some of the tenants that could be displaced have lived in their units for upwards of 20 years.

Developers have been meeting with city staff and refining their plans since at least February 2009, though residents were not notified that anything was in the works until a few weeks ago. The current proposal is for a 25-storey tower, including a seven-storey podium.

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If Jarvis St is not quite part of the Village, it is at least a close relative, the gaybourhood’s rebellious younger brother. Or, to switch metaphors entirely, Jarvis is a release valve — a neighbouring hood with a large queer population, but slightly lower rent.

The strip is rougher around the edges than the Church-Wellesley neighbourhood, but the Jarvis Street Streetscape Improvement, which earned environmental approval early this year, seems bent on changing that.

Rather, mock-ups imagine Jarvis as a Richard Florida–style “cultural corridor,” anchored by the National Ballet School and Rogers’ headquarters and lined with granite curbs, bronze sidewalk inlays, trees, planters and sidewalk light fixtures.

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George Smitherman may be leading Toronto’s mayoral race, but with the majority of Torontonians still undecided, the ex-provincial minister is rebuilding his team, and returning to his party roots.

Jeff Bangs, a Conservative insider, has left the campaign, citing family obligations. Now Bruce Davis, a veteran Liberal organizer and school board trustee, is stepping in as campaign manager. Amanda Klein, another Liberal campaigner, will serve as his deputy.

If Smitherman can maintain his lead for the next seven months, he will become Toronto’s first openly gay mayor.

Davis is pitching Smitherman as a candidate that environmentalists and business leaders can agree on. He says that successful fundraising means he can focus on letting his candidate articulate a vision for the city.

“We’ve spent a lot of time criticizing the city government, criticizing the administration, and a certain amount of that is required,” says Davis. “But I also think there’s an expectation that we have to turn now and focus on the future. I think you’ll see that over the next several weeks.”

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Even as it was passed, the reform package is a victory for the public space activists, community groups and artists who pushed it through council. Toronto’s 13 separate sets of bylaws have been harmonized, and for once may be enforced, thanks to new fines. Changes to the zoning variance process will make approving new signs more difficult. The tax will generate an estimated $10.4 million each year.

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Crime-ridden, sprawling, and underserved—accurate or not, Scarborough has a bad reputation. City councillor Norm Kelly is out to change that, using research conducted by UTSC co-op students Kathy Chan and Dorinda So.

The 68-page Fair Share Scarborough took four months of full-time work to complete, and it’s attracting more attention than your average term paper.

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Amid the Palais’ renewal, conflict has erupted between local residents, the developer and Ward 14 councillor Sylvia Watson over plans for a parking lot under a grove of willow trees and a 2.4-meter fence that will cut across the beach to keep out vandals. Pegasus, which owns several bars in Toronto, intends to open the Palais as a banquet hall this spring. They expect to start construction of the parking lot in late May.

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The council resolved to let the congregation of St. Stephen-in-the-Fields, a church on College St. at the north end of Kensington Market, stay in their building “on a month-to-month basis until a tenant is found, and subject to the continued cooperation of the parish with the Diocese.” Reactions at the congregation were mixed.

“I had been hoping…that with the sorts of feelings we’ve been getting, the feedback we’d been getting, that we were going to do better than we did,” says Martha Cunningham, a parishioner who has been coordinating efforts to raise support for St. Stephen’s.

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At the north end of Kensington Market, St. Stephen-in-the-Fields sits across the street from a fire station. Trucks regularly scream, making the 148-year-old Anglican church seem peaceful by comparison. Lately, it is anything but. The parish owes the Anglican diocese about $400,000, and on September 30 it is facing eviction from the building that has been its home for a century and a half. Jeff Nowers, a doctoral student at U of T, has been a member of the congregation for four years.

“We basically just walked in off the street, my girlfriend, who’s now my wife, and I,” says Jeff Nowers. “It’s kind of a church on the margins…a lot of interesting programs, a lot of multicultural dynamics.” Nowers chairs the advisory committee and volunteers at the church’s breakfast program.

Sharon Shelton is unhappy with her neighbours at Scarborough Town Centre. “Over the last [few] years there hasn’t been anything — any sort of partnerships — happening with the mall management or the merchants,” she says. That’s troubling because, in Scarborough, a suburb suffering from an acute shortage of social services and infrastructure, the mall functions as a de facto community centre, a place where youth and families congregate. Some feel that it should be doing more for the community.

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