Bigbox in Leslieville

In the Toronto community of Leslieville, residents and local politicians are battling against new development by Smartcentres.

Being student in the West end and living in the East end, I know for a fact that tiny little Leslieville is not a neighborhood known to most residents of Toronto. It stretches from (generously) Coxwell to Broadview along Queen East, but more specifically from Leslie street to Empire street.

The area is growing fast, with run-down auto mechanics, trendy boutiques, specialty foods, espresso bars and plenty of antique stores all sharing spaces. Also plentiful are restaurants, ranging from family joints like Dan’s Diner, to healthy energizing takeout at Pulp Kitchen, to relaxed sit-down places like Gio Rana’s Really, Really Nice Restaurant (known to locals as The Nose, for the sculpture hanging outside instead of a sign).

Leslieville is a real community, and this is what residents are facing: 1900 parking spaces, a three story development just a block or two south of Queen (depending on the street), and big name bigbox stores that will undermine small business initiative. Smartcentres (a developer connected to Wal-mart) will own half the eighteen acre property while the previous owner Rose Corp. will own the other half. Rose Corp is responsible for the Toronto Film District, which is the current occupant of most of the land.

The city has zoned the land for employment. Smartcentres’ proposal (currently being tried at the Ontario Municipal Board) would provide “2100 Ongoing and 1800+ Construction Jobs” according to their website (www.thefoundrydistrict.ca). Local business owners worry that the discount and brand name stores would distract from their business and the individuality of the community. Also, the average wage of the Smartcentres employee will be about $30 000 per year, meaning those at the bottom of the corporate ladder will hardly earn enough to live on.

Toronto Danforth City Councilor Paula Fletcher is also against the Smartcentres proposal. In her Spring/Summer newsletter, she illustrates further problems with the plan. It says “1900 parking spots will bring 7 million cars a year into the neighborhood”. Leslieville is full of cycling enthusiast and this will cause the area to become much more dangerous to them, as well as the children who attend public school nearby.

More cars also means more shoppers from outside the neighborhood. The Foundry District site lists this as a positive, saying the proposed development “will help Retain Outgoing Retail Expenditures in the Community – An MGP market study found that 67% of all retail spending is leaving the neighbourhood”.

Those in favour of the proposal are difficult to find within the community, but articles in The Toronto Star and in the Globe And Mail have quoted low income families as the prime group who will benefit from the development, especially from a possible Wal-mart. However, according to Joe Clark’s blog, the average yearly household income in Leslieville is “$61,154 (lower than the Ontario average, higher than the Canadian average).” This is hardly the target group for a Wal-mart. US-based website Wal-mart Watch also contradicts the ‘moms need cheap diapers’ argument with the fact that Wal-mart and similar stores can afford cheap prices because they pay employees badly and offer few benefits. This suggests that supporting such stores perpetuates the need for them.

So, what is there to say philosophically on this issue? The Smartcentres development proposal has raised issues of the morality of Capitalism. Capitalism can be defined as an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state. Over the course of history, Capitalism has grown along with standards of living. Freedom to own property and a free market ideally leads to equal opportunity employment. However, history also shows us that this is easily taken advantage of.

The majority of opposition to Capitalism has come from left-leaning politics, including many famous figures such as Marx, Trotsky, Lenin, and Chomsky. In Marxist theory, capitalist leaders will be overthrown by the working class in favour of a fair unionized environment and possibly communism. (Psst! Wal-mart is known to avoid unionization.)

Opposition is also found in many religious groups, where the accumulation of wealth can lead to sins such as envy and greed. Some groups, such as Judeo-Christian religions, only permit some aspects of Capitalism, while other aspects (such as lending money with interest) are forbidden.

Common problems with Capitalism are the concentration of wealth and power, unemployment and inequality between social classes. These problems are clearly evident in the Smartcentres case. Bigbox stores follow the common practices of Capitalism, such as unequal distribution of pay based on rank. Local business owners worry that their stores will not be able to compete with cheap brand names, leading to their possible unemployment and a bigbox monopoly on customers.

However, the small businesses are also part of the Capitalist system, and everyone likes them. So if the problem is not purely with Capitalism, where is it? Perhaps the problem lies in the ethical code of the developers and owners of bigbox stores, but you can’t arrest someone for being greedy or for having tough politics.

On the bright side, perhaps there won’t be a problem in Leslieville at all. As of the 21st of May, the OMB is holding a hearing to decide on the Smartcentres’ proposal. Residents and local businesses have won and lost battles in this war against bigbox: although Ontario will not declare Provincial Interest in the hearing, a motion for consolidation has been won (“the hearing is no longer site-specific and the OMB will look at a larger community context” according to the East Toronto Community Coalition). Hopefully the OMB will take the side of community values so that one of my favourite neighborhoods can continue to thrive.