Scarborough Village may not have space for its community needs but it now has "a living room" where youth can relax.
In a neighbourhood where such places are rare, the Youth Lounge at Scarborough Village Community Centre, opened last Thursday by Mayor David Miller, is a spot where teenagers can do homework or socialize with no worries, say the young artists who decorated its walls.
In one of the two rooms, now sporting a foosball table and computers along one wall Michael Nizamudin, 17 and Daniel Vasek, painted on abstract design, two children with pencils in hand beside a backdrop of the city and the word "welcome" in different languages.
"If you just want to come here and hang out, you can come in this part and over there (in the second room) workshops will be going on," said Nizamudin, adding the pair first drew up sketches for the Scarborough Village Youth Council.
Vasek said he's lived in the Village most of his life and is worried children there are becoming desensitized to violence, citing two recent murders near his home,
"I love this area but there's a lot of things that need to be changed," he said after the ceremony,
"Things like this (the lounge) bring it a little closer to where it should be."
Youth did not want "a lot of structured stuff" in the lounge, but it will offer drop-in and leadership programs as well as Selvy's Circle, which is geared to young Tamil-Canadian women, said Peter Amponsah, a Youthlink outreach worker.
Miller said the city has decided to make investments where neighbourhoods need them.
"Some of them may not cost a lot of dollars, like this (one), but they make a lot of impact."
However, the city does have $13 million to spend in the next three years in its 13 priority neighbourhoods, of which Scarborough Village, centred on Markham Road and Eglinton Avenue, is one.
Now that the lounge is open at the Kingston Road community centre, Rosemary Bell of the city's Neighbourhood Action Team for the area said her group's new primary goal is creation of community space, possibly by adding a second floor or another room to the building.
The United Way of Greater Toronto has announced plans to build "community hubs" in several of the priority neighbourhoods to create spaces where agencies can dispense services and people can meet.
But a Scarborough Village hub is not on the United Way list, a fact Bell said her team is trying to "remediate."
The area is so short of accessible public space that Action for Neighbourhood Change, a United Way-funded agency, has explored setting up a "virtual hub" to give people programs and services they need in several locations, said Suzanne Field, now in charge of that project.
Scarborough Village residents have program ideas, dressmaking or computer classes for instance, that have been frustrated for lack of space, she said, adding consultation on the virtual hub are underway,
"We want this to come from the community, not from the outside."
Creating the youth lounge meant local seniors lost a lounge and billiard room of their own, but recreation staff said programs for seniors at the centre are unchanged.