plazapops, Author at plazaPOPS

2024: Wexford Blooms 2gether

Is the ‘ugly duckling’ strip mall making a comeback?

March 24, 2025

By Michael Lewis

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Long derided as car-centric relics in need of major overhauls, the aging strip malls that dot North America’s suburbs have faced abandonment and redevelopment pressures for years as big box retailers, fulfilment warehouses and residential projects took precedence.
But with an absence of new supply amid increasingly scarce land and as remote work encourages local shopping, strip malls, typically a row of ground-level shops facing an outdoor sidewalk, a large parking lot and the street, are getting a measure of revenge.

The properties have found a new lease on life, morphing from ‘ugly duckling’ to ‘golden goose’ as the preferred retail asset class for institutional and private investors.

They’re outshining enclosed malls, where occupancy costs are comparatively steep and where vacancy rates have increased, with the departure of big footprint tenants including Sears Canada, Nordstrom and potentially, the Bay.

They are also a top pick among retail REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust) unit holders, with unenclosed plaza trust returns outpacing other retail categories.

Fred Blondeau, head of Canadian research at Green Street, says the real estate data firm favours strip malls along with industrial assets due to supply constraints and high occupancy, although valuations may also reflect what RioCan Real Estate founder Ed Sonshine has called “superb redevelopment potential.”
In the U.S., according to a September blog post from James Corl, head of private real estate investment at American asset manager Cohen & Steers, outdoor malls are the only major property type seeing sustained rental rate growth, with valuations rising, especially on those anchored by groceries or drug stores.

“We believe that a durable acceleration in earnings growth combined with relatively high current yields will propel shopping centre investment performance for some time,” Mr. Corl writes.

In this climate, and as costs derail some condominium building plans, large investors have taken note: Blackstone announced in November that it would spend US$4-billion to acquire Retail Opportunity Investments Corp., which owns about 90 open-air shopping centres, largely on the U.S. west coast.

In Canada, unenclosed strip mall occupancy is expected to remain at 97 to 98 per cent, “if not more,” Mr. Blondeau says, but the shallower rent pool compared with the U.S. could hinder landlords’ ability to push rents higher.

He also called consumer spending a key risk should the Canadian economy struggle amid the threat of U.S. tariffs. Strip malls, however, are less exposed to negative consumer sentiment than other retail, he says, due to their focus on non-discretionary products, so-called necessity goods such as groceries and medicines.

From the point of view of investors, he says strip malls in Canada boast steady cash flow from their mostly domestic tenants along with improving cap rates and strong leasing spreads – the change in rent for a new lease.

“Unenclosed retail has certainly moved up the ladder in terms of what investors want,” agrees Robert Levine, a Vancouver-based principal with real estate services firm Avison Young.

“The product type is a pretty hot commodity right now,” with factors such as the role of neighbourhood plazas as distribution depots for goods bought online bolstering potential investment returns.

In B.C., Mr. Levine says financing has been available for two major strip mall transactions already this year that commanded a total selling price of nearly $200-million for sites anchored by a Canadian Tire and Safeway, respectively.

He says a current listing for the fully leased Riverside Heights Shopping Centre in Surrey is unusual in that its 6.9 acres makes it a candidate for a hybrid investment that adds residences on top of the existing retail footprint.

He adds that during a recent series of meetings with institutional investors in Toronto, 15 of the 20 property buyers were looking for unenclosed retail. Lease rates for units in strip plazas sold in B.C. have jumped by a combined 33 per cent over the past four years, he says.

In addition to their value to investors, strip mall properties are increasingly being acknowledged for their social significance as community hubs, harking back to their postwar origins.

They’re affordable outlets for small, ethnic businesses, says City of Toronto planner Evan Sinclair, providing culturally diverse products and services as well as thousands of full- and part-time jobs.

He notes that about 8 per cent of Toronto’s more than 400 strip malls are in the immediate pipeline for redevelopment, with provincial policy calling for repurposing of outdoor malls, particularly those adjacent to transit along busy avenues.

“We’re thinking about how to be creative to try and protect the roles,” Mr. Sinclair says, adding that the “poor conditions often contribute to the affordability.”

And while he says the development pressure is sure to continue, “we don’t see plazas going extinct.”

The city, he notes, has supported a project called plazaPOPS that aims to reinvent strip malls as more palatable and environmentally friendly destinations.

PlazaPOPS encourages property owners to give up parking spots to be replaced with natural pop-up installations, while planners consider options, including reducing the amount of parking municipal rules require at the sites.
Toronto officials also say they have seen an uptick in building-permit applications from strip malls, suggesting that more owners are planning site renovations as their property values increase.

Planning staff in a report, PlazaPOV, says because strip malls tend to be “bathed in asphalt,” contributing to heat-island effects and flooding, they need vegetation, porous pavement and wider walkways to create a more inviting and sustainable setting.

The report cites a design competition championed by the University of Alberta that called for ideas for reviving strip plazas that were “dying, bleak and waiting for intervention.”

And plazaPOPS, a non-profit made up of volunteer planners and landscape architects, among others, has provided temporary installations to transform strip malls along arterial roads in Toronto’s underserved inner suburbs.

Brendan Stewart, design and research director of plazaPOPS and associate professor of landscape architecture at University of Guelph, says the group’s work underlines how “something really significant could be lost” if the development of strip malls is not approached with care.

Beginning with a pilot project in the summer of 2019 at the Wexford Plaza in Scarborough, plazaPOPS dedicated 10 parking spots for a community space on the private commercial property that was adorned with modular planters, illuminated benches, tables, umbrellas and more than 500 native plants.

The City of Toronto project that followed, in 2022-2024, was funded by the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario, says Mr. Stewart, and included an additional 11 installations at strip malls in Rexdale and Scarborough.

“We are trying to create an environment that offers a bit of respite from the oppressive heat and concrete,” says Mr. Stewart.

“People value the opportunity to sit in an immersive green environment,” he says, even if it is surrounded by concrete and asphalt.
“You can imagine how big a juxtaposition that is,” he adds. “It’s almost surreal.”

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ResearchPOPS

Pondering our Plazas

January 17, 2025

Novae Res Urbis

By Lana Hall

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The City of Toronto is exploring the future of its
strip mall plazas, many of which are located within inner suburban neighbourhoods and on sites considered prime land for redevelopment.

In a new report titled “Prospects for Plazas” City planning staff consider the role of strip malls in their communities, how to mitigate displacement of small businesses within plazas being redeveloped, and how to enhance the public realm of existing strip mall plazas.

These strip mall plazas are prevalent across Toronto’s inner suburbs, home to more than 3,100 establishments, and as of 2023, accounting for just under 13,000 jobs, according to City data. These low-rise commercial forms have evolved from what were intended to be a temporary solution in the mid-1950s to 1980s—to provide local access to goods and services in a sprawling metropolis—into a permanent fixture of Toronto’s retail scene.

As the report highlights, strip mall plazas play strong economic, social and cultural roles in their communities, especially in neighbourhoods with lower household incomes
and higher proportions of immigrants and racialized people, where these plazas tend
to be located.

Of the study’s 300 survey respondents, 58 per cent reported visiting strip mall plazas once a week, while 70 per cent of those reported visiting two or more businesses on a single trip to a plaza.

Plaza visitors reported that proximity to their home, access to a variety of services, and the ability to support small and local businesses attracted them to local strip malls, while
business owners valued the more affordable rents in these spaces than in other locations.

The report also found that strip malls tend to contain ethnic food retailing and food offerings,
fostering local communal spaces for cultural expression.

Thanks to digital platforms like Instagram and TikTok, these spaces have also begun drawing
visitors from other parts of the city, eager to find “hidden gems” and other kinds of cultural
cuisine.

“Even though they’re more suburban in style, [strip mall plazas] are these really important
Main Streets, even though we don’t always look at them like that,” says City of Toronto planner Evan Sinclair, who worked on the report.

But Toronto’s strip malls and the businesses within them face two major challenges. Many of them end up being redeveloped into residential or mixed-use communities, which often displaces those businesses.

Plazas that remain intact have often been designed as “islands in a sea of cars,” and may lack easy pedestrian access or an attractive public realm in favour of plentiful surface parking.

According to City of Toronto data, there are currently 33 strip mall plazas with active development proposals in the city. Though
most applications propose some replacement of non-residential gross floor area (GFA), the amount being replaced is often less than what the original strip mall contained. In fact, the replacement rate of non- residential GFA on these sites is only 56 per cent.

“That’s really challenging,” says Sinclair of mitigating displacement. “I think it’s what
we spent a lot of time thinking through, and what a lot of those emerging directions startto get at: ‘How can we continue to provide the functions that the plaza provides today in a
new development that brings in really important things like more housing?’”

Other plazas, says Sinclair, may not be good candidates for redevelopment, or may have landowners who have no intention of taking on a development project. Those strip mall plazas may instead be candidates for public realm
improvement, which is where the report’s second theme of ‘enhancing the physical plaza
experience’ comes in.

Many of these strip mall plazas, says Sinclair, contain large, underutilized surface parking lots, which could lend themselves to forms of
activation that improve the public realm. This could take the form of adding landscaping
or seating, such as through the PlazaPOPS initiative.

Since 2019, PlazaPOPS has organized 12 temporary installations in privately-owned
plaza parking lots across the city, mostly in the form of parkettes or seating areas.

PlazaPOPS director of design and research Brendan Stewart says their pilots have resulted
in a broader diversity of strip mall visitors than what these plazas might normally see, with various age and cultural demographics attracted to what he calls a “third space” that public activations often provide.

Stewart says these activations work best in parking lots that already have an oversupply of parking spaces, are close to a transit stop, and have high-volume businesses close by, such as restaurants, libraries, or other neighbourhood services.

“We would definitely like to see a scaling up of PlazaPOPS, and we do think there’s a lot of potential for the model we’ve developed to spread throughout the city,” says Stewart.

In North York, which is home to 25 per cent of Toronto’s strip mall plazas, ward 6 York Centre councillor James Pasternak says plaza redevelopment proposals should be required to replace any retail or commercial space being demolished.

“It is crucial that we protect the various businesses—both large and small—that make up our suburban plazas.

These locations are often the commercial and social centre of a community and provide
local residents access to vital shopping, business, and medical services.”

While the City’s report does not provide specific
recommendations, staff are hopeful it will eventually inform the creation of policies, programs, or tools that might help achieve some of the report’s directions in terms of supporting and enhancing the businesses within the city’s strip malls.

Sinclair says that will require conversations with
other City divisions, including economic development and culture, and finance.

“We don’t want this to be a siloed project. We want to plug ourselves into other initiatives happening at the City because we see that as being our best opportunity to have [these themes] actually go somewhere,” he says.

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2024: Wexford Blooms 2gether

Toronto-area strip malls are foodie havens. Here’s how this project is helping them become places for people, not just cars

November 21, 2024

By Shawn Micallef

Link to article

While not exactly a secret, strip malls were an underappreciated urban aspect of the city for years. In 2002, former mayor Mel Lastman even said, “Strip plazas have got to go. These things are a holy mess. Their time is over.”

Yet they’re essential parts of our urban landscape and throughout the Greater Toronto Area have been recognized as great retail expressions of multiculturalism. Cheaper than downtown main streets, small businesses can flourish, especially true in the food scene. Previously ignored strip mall eateries are routinely celebrated, while a place like Ridgeway Plaza in Mississauga, with nearly 100 ethnic food options, has become such a foodie haven it suffers from the strain of so many people visiting.

Seeing how strip malls, designed sometimes decades ago for motorists, have evolved into vibrant, walkable places on their own has been fascinating. Now the plazaPOPS project is helping them adapt more formally.

“I grew up getting bagels and cold cuts from strip malls near Bathurst and Lawrence, and loved these places despite being told in planning school how ugly and worthless they, and the suburbs in general, were,” says Daniel Rotsztain. “Despite having a lot of big roads and cars, Toronto’s suburbs are its most interesting places.”

Innovative public space changes sometimes have a hard time taking off in Toronto, especially ones that take away parking.

“Fortunately, we found the quirkiest strip mall owner in the quirkiest corner of Scarborough

who took a chance on us, the Kiriakou family of Wexford Heights Plaza,” says Rotsztain. “Now that we have photos, testimonials and reports detailing the positive impacts public space projects have on businesses, it’s far easier to get a property owner on board. The pandemic also made things easier, demonstrating to business owners the value of vibrant public space, while also pushing them to improvise and do things they never would have otherwise.”

This year, plazaPOPS hired Wexford resident and urban planner Naziha Nasrin to lead their programming. “We wanted to reflect the needs of our community and give them things that they wanted to see,” says Nasrin. “This year we were able to host multiple workshops, including Arabic calligraphy, urban sketching, and an arts showcase hosted by a local resident who lives across the street.” Naziha is particularly proud of their dhaba, or night market, inspired by informal South Asian roadside eateries.

“When we held our first dhaba, we expanded our site and took up half the parking lot to have a big community night market that reflected the culture of our local residents along Lawrence,” says Naziha. “Many of the business owners are immigrants from South Asia and the Middle East and have a big culture of being outdoors on patios, sitting on chairs in parking lots and sipping on chai and watching the street life go by. One of the vendors told me, ‘I’m so happy I’m here. This event is a representation of the real Scarborough.’”

Toronto needs more of this adaptation of both policy and the urban form, not unlike how Italian immigrants applied for Toronto’s first licenced patio on St. Clair 1963.

See for yourself at the next Wexford dhaba beginning at 6 p.m. on Fri., Sept. 13 at 2020 Lawrence Ave. E.

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2024: Wexford Blooms 2gether

Toronto’s privately owned public spaces unknown to many: advocates

August 29, 2024

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As Toronto continues to grow, so does the demand and need for new parks and open spaces — but for many, dozens of the city’s public spaces remain hidden in plain sight.

Ten years ago, Toronto introduced “privately owned publicly accessible spaces,” also called POPS. These are areas within private developments that are open for public use, often integrated into densely populated neighbourhoods where new parks aren’t feasible.

According to a city website mapping the spaces, there are more than 200 such spaces across Toronto.

But a decade on, many Torontonians are still unaware of POPS and their intended purpose. That’s because their design sometimes lacks the inviting atmosphere of a traditional park, leading to confusion about whether people are welcome to use them.

And while many of the spaces are marked by small plaques, it’s easy to to overlook them.

“You don’t know whether you’re able to sit and hang out there or if you’re going to be yelled at by security,” said Wesley Reibeling from Park People, an organization that encourages people to get outside and use community parks.

Often, the city will negotiate with private developers to include POPS as part of the development application and review process.

“If you think of our public spaces like parks and courtyards, this is another piece of that,” Reibeling said. “In neighbourhoods … where communities live in dense

pockets, we cant just pop a park out of nowhere. So how do we make use of the space that’s already here? We can work with local developers to create spaces like POPS.”

But Paul Hess, a professor in the University of Toronto’s department of geography and planning, believes that better design and signage could help make POPS more inviting.
“It’s not just a space for the people that belong in the building,” Hess said. “The signage could be better.”

For many, POPS offer a valuable addition to the city’s landscape, but some advocates emphasize that as Toronto develops, preserving and expanding traditional green spaces should remain a priority.

Daniel Rotsztain, executive director of a company called Plaza POPS wants to see more accessible public space in the city. Its aim is to create gathering places where already existing vibrant culture, community and business can continue to thrive.

“There is an inequity in access to what we call social infrastructure like community centres, parks and even those beloved stores where everyone knows your name. A lot of it is concentrated in the downtown core and along the subway lines. There’s less of it in the inner suburbs in Toronto,” he said.

“We want to work with communities to create social infrastructure that represents them, take ownership of and express what their community wants and needs.”

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2024: Wexford Blooms 2gether

Interview with Naziha Nasrin on CBC Radio’s Metro Morning

July 26, 2024

Ahead of our first Wexford Dhaba on July 27, 2024, plazaPOPS’ Program Director, Naziha Nasrin, spoke with David Common, the host of Metro Morning.

Naziha explains what Dhabas are before she shares what motivated her to plan Scarborough’s first Dhaba. Have a listen by watching the above video, which includes some bonus animations!

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2024: Wexford Blooms 2gether

Toronto strip mall to host free night market inspired by Indian subcontinent

July 24, 2024

By Etti Bali

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Scarborough is set to have its first taste of a one-of-a-kind night market experience, thanks to an initiative by plazaPOPS at Wexford Heights, which works to transform strip mall parking spaces into public gathering spaces that promote small businesses, culture and community.

The upcoming Wexford Dhaba is poised to be a night market and fair, or mela, that celebrates the food and culture of the diaspora from the Indian subcontinent.

It promises to host a variety of local vendors, restaurants and musicians. Handcrafted wares and cuisine from across the Indian subcontinent, like panipuri, will be among the offerings.

Local musicians from the Toronto-based South Asian music group Virasat Collective as well as Syrian band Diar will provide live music and entertainment.

Dhabas were pit stops that sprouted along the trade route connecting Kabul in Afghanistan to Punjab, Delhi, and Chittagong in the Indian subcontinent in the 1940s to serve food to long-haul truck drivers.

They depended on these establishments for food, rest, and bathroom breaks before continuing the journey. Some of the states were partitioned when the British left India and became part of what is now Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The cultural legacy of dhabas, however, remained unpartitioned.

These dhabas operate 24/7 and serve rustic local fare that’s tasty and nourishing for the body and soul. A fixture of dhabas is the tandoor, or clay oven fed with hot coals, in which a variety of rotis (or flatbreads) are cooked and served with dollops of freshly churned white butter, curries and a side of the most authentic vernacular music that exists only on the cassette players of truck and lorry drivers.

The ambience is in sync with the utilitarian nature of a dhaba’s purpose. Plastic chairs, jute-rope charpoys and vibrant truck art dominate the landscape of a dhaba. Today, however, many dhabas have revamped themselves into brick-and-mortar restaurants to cater to the cosmopolitan urban traveller.

This is not the first time that plazaPOPs has planned an initiative around turning strip malls into places of cultural confluence. The team has successfully executed community pop-ups in north Etobicoke and a garden pop-up called WexPOPs at Wexford Heights Plaza.

The event will be held on July 27 from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. at Wexford Blooms 2gether hub site, 2020 Lawrence Ave. E.

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GuelphPOPS

Reimagine Food Story: plazaPOPS

November 21, 2023

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This past summer, the City of Guelph received their first installation of plazaPOPS at Shelldale Community Centre. plazaPOPS is a community-lead, high impact, and low cost, process to transform parking lots into free and accessible gathering places. Together, diverse stakeholders from around the city worked together to install and maintain the plazaPOPS, which included The City of Guelph, Our Food Future, Guelph Community Health Centre, The SEED, Kindle, University of Guelph, Food Uniting Neighbours and Habitat for Humanity. Known as ParkPOPS to the greater community, this temporary, “pop up”, infrastructure supported gardening and gathering at Shelldale Community Centre and Norm Jary Park during the summertime.

plazaPOPS is led by Brendan Stewart and Karen Landman, professors of Landscape Architecture at the University of Guelph and Daniel Rotsztain, the Urban Geographer. After a successful pilot of WexPOPS in Scarborough in 2019, and another pilot at the University of Guelph, PlazaPOPS received operational funding for 3-years from the Federal Development Agency for Southern Ontario, through its “Main Street Renewal and Rebuild” Initiative in 2021.

In July 2023, plazaPOPS was installed on 5 parking spaces adjacent to the Shelldale Community Garden plots. The infrastructure consisted of wooden benches, chairs, and tables, umbrellas to provide some shade, and grooves that held various plants, flowers and vegetables.

Each partner played an important role in the PlazaPOPS project. The City of Guelph, Our Food Future, Habitat for Humanity, the University of Guelph and Food Uniting Neighbours supported the installation and deconstruction of the site, while the SEED, the University of Guelph and Food Uniting Neighbours, and Kindle facilitated on-site maintenance and summer programming.
PlazaPOPS was an impactful project and supported the vibrancy of the Shelldale Community Centre. It was an initiative by the community for the community; creating a welcoming space for diverse users. Although occupying just a small portion of the Shelldale Community Centre’s parking lot, PlazaPOPS activated the space in a big way by giving back to the community and meeting local needs. The infrastructure acted as a meeting point for the community; for people to chat, eat food, get to know each other, rest, and support different community events. It also provided a central view of the Shelldale Farm Park, the Community Centre, Willow Road Public School, the basketball court and the splash pad. Children, adults, and seniors regularly occupied and made the space better than how it was previously used.

plazaPOPS was accessible to the public from July to mid-October, and relied upon a mighty team to help deconstruct the infrastructure. The plants and flowers were available to the public to rehome, while the frames, seats and tables will be stored in the winter and put up again next summer for Downtown Guelph’s patio season!

To learn more about plazaPOPS, click here to go to their website.

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2023: Wexford Blooms

Student corner: Reflections on participating in plazaPOPS at the University of Guelph

October 10, 2023

Ground Magazine

By Ryan De Jong

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Upon entering the MLA program at the University of Guelph, we were given a mountain of software and information to absorb. Through this process, our lives and learning experiences as students can become somewhat insular and confined to our school’s design studio. But last winter, our professor Brendan Stewart brought us out of our studio caves for the final project in our Community Design class. In this project, we were tasked with developing designs for this year’s plazaPOPS installations along Lawrence Avenue in Wexford, Scarborough. The design process for this project was memorable, as our class was involved in two community design workshops, hosted at the Working Women Community Centre in Scarborough. In these workshops, we engaged with a diverse and lively group of approximately 30 community members to generate and refine design concepts. This was a new experience for us, which deserves some reflection.

Prior to the workshops, our class visited the five parking lot sites along Lawrence Ave to conduct a site analysis and get a feel for the neighbourhood. We were joined by Daniel Rotsztain and Tupac Espinoza of ERA Architects, and Brennan Luchsinger, the general manager of contracting for Building Up. These individuals, along with Brendan Stewart, Rui Felix of ERA, and Jennifer Wan (who ERA hired from our class), later worked together to realize the designs our class and community developed after the semester.

Through the process of these two workshops, our class gained valuable experiences and lessons in public engagement. There were some common questions and hurdles that came about before and during the workshops, such as:
• What jargon words should we avoid and replace? (i.e.‘programming’ with ‘activity’).
• How do we engage and get thoughts from quieter community members?
• How much technical detail should we include in drawings?

Along with these questions, the first big challenge we found was time constraints, as we generally had five-minute conversations with the community groups. Longer discussions would have been helpful to get more detailed and flushed out ideas, but the workshops were already two hours, and a longer time commitment may have dissuaded some from attending. These constraints forced us to be strategic and mindful of how we communicated and engaged with the groups; we needed to be concise and avoid using jargon. Moreover, the workshops cemented the importance of having clear concepts and drawings. In this regard, we found community members tended to gravitate towards models and perspectives, rather than technical drawings, to understand the designs.

The conversations we had were valuable as they gave us deeper information and understanding about the sites, surrounding businesses, and community. They were also key in helping us generate design ideas and themes.

But the workshop process itself and how it enabled us to form connections with the community felt just as valuable. This was echoed in our class readings, where Emily Talen wrote in Do-It-Yourself Urbanism: a history (2015), the act of doing has benefits in itself. She says the act of doing, “can bring a diverse group of people together, united in a common, active purpose.” Karl Linn also noted in Building Commons and Community (2007) that, “The process is more important than the product”. I expect that when the community members visited the sites in the summer, they likely felt a sense of pride and deeper connection to their neighbourhood knowing they played a role in helping design the installations.

As a class, we found the workshops to be an exciting and rewarding experience. Classmates noted that, despite challenges such as our visions not always aligning with the community members, the workshops inspired greater enthusiasm for the project and they felt they were providing an act of service to the community which was gratifying. And, being the final studio class of our program, the experience felt like a bridge into our future professional careers. As students, we often forget the minute details and material learned in class—I admit I’ve forgotten much of the plant ID knowledge and facts I learned last semester. But, reflecting on the courses I’ve taken and material I’ve been exposed to, it is experiences such these community design workshops I remember the most. I will always remember precariously loading our big models into cars with my classmates, the stories I heard, and the faces I met in the workshops. I will remember chatting with Abdi, who drew a camel during the concept development exercise which involved drawing a Wexford flag, as it reminded him of home back in Somalia.

As students, the field trips and people we meet along the way leave an impression on us; we are products of our environment and experiences. These out-of-studio experiences enrich our education experience—broadening our perspectives and improving our communication skills, making us well-rounded people and designers. Moreover, they set a precedent for how to approach projects in the future. As a class, the excitement of the workshops and the importance and value of facilitating community involvement in the design process is now etched in our minds. And while this process requires a lot of coordination and planning, it is worth it. As musician Brian Eno put it: “Although great new ideas are usually articulated by individuals, they are nearly always generated by communities.”

In the final lecture at the University of Guelph this year, BLA (06) graduate Brad Smith, OALA, of Seferian Design Group emphasized the importance of lifelong learning. Our MLA class has completed our foundation courses in our program and is now focusing on thesis research, but it is clear our learning is not over: it has just begun.

plazaPOPS design concept models. IMAGES/ Videsh Brijpaul

plazaPOPS design concept models. IMAGES/ Videsh Brijpaul

plazaPOPS design concept models. IMAGES/ Videsh Brijpaul

Workshop participants look over the concepts. IMAGE/ Videsh Brijpaul

plazaPOPS community workshop participants. IMAGE/ Videsh Brijpaul

Workshop participants put dots by design concepts they like best. IMAGE/ Videsh Brijpaul

Looking at design options for plazaPOPS. IMAGE/ Videsh Brijpaul

Brendan Stewart shows the plazaPOPS timeline. IMAGE/ Videsh Brijpaul

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2023: Wexford Blooms

Trading parking spaces for public spaces

August 17, 2023

By Mark Wessel

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A Southern Ontario group has come up with the novel idea of creating new and vibrant common areas in underused space such as strip mall parking lots.

There is overwhelming evidence that spending time in urban parks is good for physical and mental health.

Yet despite that reality, recent studies show that urban green infrastructure is far more prevalent in upscale neighbourhoods and much scarcer in poorer, multicultural neighbourhoods.

To address the challenge of these park or play “deserts,” Southern Ontario group plazaPOPS has come up with the novel idea of creating new and vibrant common areas in underused space such as strip mall parking lots.

This is an idea first conceived of as part of Landscape Architect Daniel Rotsztain’s thesis for the University of Guelph. (Note: POPS is an acronym for privately owned public spaces, but also relates to the idea of creating pop-up installations).

Sara Udow the interim managing director of plazaPOPS who presented at the recent Park People Conference, says that her group is on a mission to “transform privately owned parking lots and underused spaces into accessible gathering places that celebrate local culture while supporting small businesses.”

And by doing so, at least partially address the all too common challenge of lack of green space or places to recreate in many suburban neighbourhoods.

A prime example of this mindset in motion is the recently launched WexPOPS, a pop-up mini paradise in Scarborough’s Wexford Plaza that will be up and running until the end of October.

Highlights of WexPOPS includes seating areas and space for local musicians to perform, surrounded by several colourful plants and flowers to help create a backyard garden effect.

“What’s so amazing about (projects such as WexPOPS) is it’s a good news story that brings in different people with different perspectives,” notes Udow, from BIAs to community groups to local businesses. All working toward the common goal of creating a community hub on a once underutilized strip of asphalt.

Yet another unique aspect of plazaPOPS is they’re designed to solicit community input from the outset and as conveyed in their literature describing how WexPOPS came to fruition, “we overwhelmingly heard from our Community Working Group about the importance of bringing more green space to the sidewalks and strip malls. And this project goes GREEN to the MAX… including lush garden beds and planters full of native plants.”

With WexPOPS and similar projects in other parts of Toronto and now Guelph, Udow says the group puts a lot of thought into how these pop-up parks will impact on the community which includes conducting public life studies to understand what factors will encourage or discourage the use of public space, then using this knowledge to create projects more likely to be received as a community asset which in turn becomes a meeting ground for local residents.

Reflecting on the transition of Wexford Plaza from a before and after WexPOPS perspective, Udow observes that “previously it was mostly young men gathering in the strip mall parking lot.”

However after the transition that same space began to attract “all ages (including) children, older people and more women. And it has become a place where a more diverse group of people can gather.”

Apart from federal government funding, Udow says that future financial support could be driven by local BIAs and businesses, including potentially the owners and retail tenants of the strip malls where these parkettes are being built.

Her sense of optimism for these projects to become self sustaining stems from the fact that a few years back the initial response of strip mall owners was “they didn’t really understand the purpose (of plazaPOPS) or want to give up parking spots.”

However that perception has since done a 180 degree turn. “Once they understood what was happening (including how these installations became a compelling draw for locals) they loved the idea,” she says.

Apart from the inestimable value of breaking down barriers and fostering a greater sense of community at these sites, clearly there’s an economic ripple effect that cities considering establishing their own plazaPOPS should be mindful of.

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2023: Wexford Blooms

A Toronto strip mall parking lot is being converted into an outdoor movie theatre

July 30, 2023

By Kimia Afshar Mehrabi

Link to article

While strip malls are ordinarily where you’d pick up a piping hot meal, pay a visit to your dentist, or grab an icy drink from a convenience store, one plaza in Toronto is having its parking lot converted into an outdoor movie theatre soon.

Led by the local community, plazaPOPs is an organization that supports the transformation of strip mall parking lots into free, safe, and accessible gathering places that support small businesses in the area.

Their next project at the Wexflord Plaza in Scarborough invites you to a double-bill film screening under the stars and surrounded by the “dynamic lights of the strip mall signage.”
The screening will include two movies about the strip mall itself — with “Wexford Plaza” being the feature film of the night.

The flick, directed by Toronto-based Joyce Wong, immerses audiences in the lives of two distinct characters — a disillusioned security guard and a charismatic bartender.

“As their paths intertwine in unexpected ways, ‘Wexford Plaza’ delves into themes of longing, connection, and the search for meaning, offering a poignant and authentic portrayal of the human experience and life in Scarborough,” a description of the film reads.

“The Wexford” documentary, directed by Michael Barry, is set to play before the feature film. The heartwarming documentary sheds light on the Wexford Restaurant, a Scarborough landmark operated by three generations of the Kiriakou family.

“This heartfelt film celebrates the enduring legacy of the Wexford Restaurant and its significant role in bringing people together through food, stories, and laughter, and is an homage to the restaurant that closed its doors after 63 years in 2020,” a description of the documentary says.

This year, plazaPOPS has also partnered with the Working Women Community Centre and the Wexford Heights BIA to deliver four installations along Lawrence Ave East, which will be installed and programmed until the end of October 2023.

In the spirit of supporting local businesses, plazaPOPS is encouraging attendees to patronize the Wexford Heights BIA’s array of restaurants to purchase treats for the screening.

The completely-free event is open to all, and you’re invited to bring your own lawn chairs or grab a seat at the WexPOPs installation in the parking lot.

The event takes place on Tuesday, Aug. 8 at 8 p.m. at 2072 Lawrence Ave E.

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PlazaPOPS is funded by the City of Toronto’s Main Street Recovery and Rebuild Initiative, as part of Government of Canada support through the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario).

Research for plazaPOPS is funded through a SSHRC Partnership Development grant, in partnership with the City of Toronto and the University of Guelph’s School of Environmental Design and Rural Development (SEDRD) in the Ontario Agricultural College.