Tenenbaums a 'canary in a coal mine' for southwest Scarborough

MIKE ADLER

February 9, 2010

Harvey Tenenbaum saw potential at that corner of Fallingbrook Road; a long, pinkish commercial building with office space above, close to Toronto's downtown.

But he didn't ask his wife Judith before buying it.

She arrived to find it in a sorry state, and herself threatened by someone inside.

"There were grow-ops in the building. Street people were living in the building," Tenenbaum told Scarborough Community Council last week, but added she still recognized the place was special.

"It's boutiquey," she said.

The Tenenbaums moved half their DNA-testing business into the building - 155 Fallingbrook Rd. and 1212 to 1238 Kingston Rd. - found new tenants and may spend $300,000 to restore its "quasi-Art Deco" exterior this spring.

But Judith Tenenbaum said such investments are hard to make with the regular vandalism the site of a former bowling alley and supermarket suffers week by week, including "things torn off the building" and graffiti on every window and door, despite flyers she's distributed along Kingston asking for it to stop.

"We've been through plenty," she added.

"I don't want to drive down here and see garbage bins on fire and melting on the sidewalk - which I have done. Something's got to be done about that."

The Tenenbaums, who are considering selling their King City home and moving to Scarborough, are "a very interesting canary in the mine" - an important test case - in the city's effort to rebuild and revitalize the Kingston Road retail strip in Birch Cliff, said local councillor Brian Ashton.

The area is Toronto's "new planning frontier" but if investors like Tenenbaums can't be kept interested, "we have lost," Ashton said, before his colleagues received a third part of a Kingston revitalization study, the section covering blocks between Victoria Park Avenue and Glen Everest Road.

Harvey Tenenbaum praised the city plan, which will guarantee some official plan and zoning amendments, set urban design guidelines and improve streetscapes, creating a commercial-residential zone with heights of two to eight storeys, depending on location.

"It's business people who are going to make investments and make it happen or not happen," he said, adding the Birch Cliff area, while "beautiful" and a more attractive location than Toronto's "rather sterile" outer suburbs, "needs in the worst way the type of upgrading and polishing the report talks about" in order to get off "a treadmill to oblivion."

Clients coming from Ajax or Pickering have to drive past "Sanford and Son-type establishments and car lots," Tenenbaum complained, adding the couple understand "these rows of boarded-up properties that are a detriment" aren't going to disappear overnight.

The Tenenbaums said they would lend their experience to a working group supporting the study while they attempt to form a business improvement area.

Ashton said things are changing for the better in Birch Cliff and the study's approach to rezoning is a signal to investors the city is committed, while protecting the area's "neighbourhood characteristics."

Scarborough Centre Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker predicted it won't be long until improvements bring the "magic of the Beach" to the area and property values rise as a result.