plazapops, Author at plazaPOPS - Page 2 of 4

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.

Explore plazaPOPS

GuelphPOPS

Community gathering space and garden pops up at Shelldale Centre

July 13, 2023

By Mark Pare

Link to article

plazaPOPS has popped back up in Guelph.
The makeshift gathering place is being set up in the parking lot at the Shelldale Centre, thanks to a collaborative effort from a number of different local organizations. But it’s more than just a gathering space, it’s meant to promote a circular food economy.

It’ll include garden boxes, and accessible seating facing a garden and forested area. Shade structures are also going up. The project, as a whole, is taking up five parking spaces.
The pieces being used have been stored in Guelph since 2019, when a pop-up pilot project – called WexPOPS – ran in Scarborough.

“We’re missing those (gathering) places in many places,” said Ashlee Cooper, the manager of food equity and community resilience with Our Food Future.

“It can be in a parking lot of a park like this, it can be a parking lot in some other location in the city.”

She said we’re in need of connection, and places like this help accomplish that goal.
Looking around for a location, Cooper said taking up shop outside the Shelldale Centre was a natural fit with all the activity happening nearby, including the garden and the amenities of Norm Jary Park.

“I’m so happy and proud (to) coordinate nice people from (different backgrounds),” said Omelnisaa Giddam, the coordinator of the Shelldale Farm Park.

The Guelph Community Health Centre, Kindle Communities, Habitat for Humanity Guelph Wellington, the SEED and Shelldale Farm Park are all working together in the venture.
The project, Giddam said, supports the Onward Willow community, and hopes it builds community resilience.

“plazaPOPS donated all of the materials,” added Brendan Stewart, a landscape architecture professor at U of G, and one of the two brainchilds behind PlazaPOPS.

“We’re thrilled that they’re being reused, and this is an amazing community project.”
Stewart said he’s just watching from the sidelines, as community groups take the lead on the build. But he admits there’s a feeling of nostalgia to see the pieces back out and being used.

“It’s kind of actually emotional right now, because there’s a lot of blood, sweat and tears put into this project in 2019,” he said, adding five sites are also going up in Scarborough.

“I spent a lot of time working on the design, and the build of this the first time, and I’ve moved it five times and I’ve got the paint still in my basement, so it’s very personal. It means a lot, it’s awesome.”

“We’re super grateful that they entertained the idea of letting other people use it,” Cooper added.

The pop-up will be open to the public this weekend, and closes around Thanksgiving.
“We’re trying to demonstrate circular food economy principles, so that’s looking at the whole food system,” Cooper said.

“Once PlazaPOPS is taken down, all of the soil and all of the plants will be distributed to the community, to be re-planted somewhere else. All the pieces will be re-used for the next installation.”

She said they’re going for “absolutely no waste.”

Explore plazaPOPS

GuelphPOPS

Guelph to open pop-up space at Shelldale Centre

July 11, 2023

By Ken Hashizume

Link to article

Something is popping up at the Shelldale
Centre.

The City of Guelph is bringing back the plazaPOPS program this summer with the help of Our Food Future’s Reimagine Food initiative.
The project will see a gathering space and garden boxes installed inside the parking lot of the centre.

“It’s benches, garden boxes with fresh herbs and pollinator plants, shade structure and umbrellas,” said Ashlee Cooper, manager of food equity and community resiliency at the City of Guelph.

“It’s really taking an underutilized public space, making it inviting, making it a place where people can gather and enjoy their time outside together.”

Work on the installation of the benches and garden boxes will begin Wednesday. Volunteers with Habitat for Humanity Guelph Wellington, the local Onward Willow community will be putting together the space.

The SEED at Guelph Community Health Centre and Shelldale Farm Park community gardeners will be planting the herbs and maintaining the garden boxes. Access to the space is being provided by Kindle Communities.

Cooper said the space will situated next to the Shelldale Community Gardens.

“It is meant to be an addition to the Norm Jarry Park and the Shelldale Centre, ” Cooper said.

“Folks who are growing food can take a rest. They can also take some of the herbs that will be growing there.”

PlazaPOPS was developed by University of Guelph professors Brendan Stewart and Karen Landman, both part of the U of G’s Landscape Architecture program. They along with Daniel Rotsztain, an artist and landscape designer, first introduced the pop-up space concept in 2019 that turn small spaces in strip mall parking lots into a “human-friendly oasis.”

“The infrastructure was sitting in storage at the University,” Cooper recalled. “It was available and we thought it would be a wonderful addition to the Guelph community.”

Rotsztain, who also serves as executive director of plazaPOPS, said: “We’re thrilled for this installation to be coming to the Onward Willow neighbourhood.”

The plazaPOPS Shelldale Centre location is scheduled to open this Friday until mid-October.

Explore plazaPOPS

2023: Wexford Blooms

‘Good for the spirit’: Pop-up mini-paradises coming to Scarborough’s Wexford Heights as plazaPOPS returns

June 21, 2023

Scarborough Mirror

By Mike Adler

Link to article

Picture this: you’re walking carefully through plaza parking lots in Scarborough’s Wexford Heights and you find hammocks to lie down in.
And a then three-wheeled tuk-tuk you can sit in while eating takeout food.
And an oasis of plants around a small stage.

It can only mean WexPOPS is back.
The first experiment in creating privately-owned public spaces (POPS) brightened Wexford Heights Plaza in 2019. After turning up in North Etobicoke’s Thistletowne last year, it’s returning to Wexford with five plaza installations, not one.

“These are publicly accessible, no-pay-to-play spaces for gathering,” Daniel Rotsztain, executive director of plazaPOPS in Toronto.
“It’s good for the spirit.”

What Rotsztain tells plaza owners is that they are sacrificing a few parking spaces temporarily — 10 at Wexford Plaza for the project’s event hub, three at Colony Plaza for the tuk-tuk — to draw more customers and boost local businesses.

Four years ago, volunteers built an oasis at Wexford Heights Plaza stacked with 300 planters filled with vegetables, herbs which were given away and native plants transplanted to The Meadoway later.

“It really demonstrated what else you can do with the extra space we have in our neighbourhoods,” said Rotsztain, though some people “thought we were a garden centre.”

Other WexPOPS locations are ready to pop up between Warden and Pharmacy avenues at strategic spots where they are being welcomed.

Rotsztain’s group staged a design process at the Working Women Community Centre (Victoria Park Hub) to decide the focus of each site.

The plan was to have the installations ready for the Taste of Lawrence 2023, the area’s annual street festival, on July 7 to 9.

Being experimental, WexPOPS is running late but should be up for a three-month period from August through October.

“If other groups want to do this, we kind of have a manual,” Rotsztain said.

The hammocks will be set up in a space outside the Arab Community Centre of Toronto.
WexPOPS wants to hear from community groups interested in hosting events, Rotsztain said.

One design process suggestion was a drive-in movie at Wexford Heights Plaza, he said. “We might even show Wexford Plaza, the movie.”

Explore plazaPOPS

2022: ThistlePOPS

plazaPOPS Aims to Enhance Community in Suburban Landscapes

November 10, 2022

University of Guelph

Link to article

Strip mall parking lots have never been renowned for their ability to entice passers-by to gather and mingle. But that has been changing in parts of Toronto in the last few years thanks to a University of Guelph-led project called plazaPOPS.

The project has transformed barren parking lots in Toronto’s outer boroughs into inviting spaces where residents can sit and chat between shopping errands, or where entire neighbourhoods can gather for day-long community and cultural events.

This year, the first in a three-year grant-funded program of new plazaPOPS, saw a new expanded approach, with four parking lots throughout north Etobicoke repurposed into plazaPOPS spaces through the Albion Islington Square BIA, in partnership with the Rexdale Community Hub.

Each plazaPOPS site featured shaded benches and planters filled with trees and native perennial plants to attract pollinators, as well as murals, a stage and street art projects created by local artists.

A local church hosted a weekly free BBQ and concert at one of the sites, while several large community-led events were held throughout the summer, including carnivals with music, free food and local entertainers. The season ended with a fall harvest festival featuring music and Diwali performances.

Daniel Rotsztain, a U of G graduate whose master of landscape architecture thesis helped launch plazaPOPS, says wherever the team goes, they have insisted the local community lead the event planning.

“We want to create an authentic relationship with community members so that each installation expresses their local culture and their vision for the neighbourhood,” he said.

Enhance spaces that have no space for communing

A parking lot might seem an unusual locale for a neighbourhood party, but as landscape architecture professor Prof. Brendan Stewart explained, the point of plazaPOPS is to create a “main street” atmosphere in parts of the city that are dominated by large lanes of traffic.
“We aim to provide a publicly accessible space where there are already lots of things happening and where people are spending time,” said Stewart, a professor in the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development (SEDRD) within the Ontario Agricultural College. “The point is to enhance spaces that are already buzzing but have no space for communing.”

Many of the plazaPOPS have been in strip mall parking lots where locally owned businesses have agreed to give up parking spaces to create a community meeting place.

“We go to where we are invited. We want to support small business, not push anyone out,” Stewart said. “And we always go back to the idea that what’s good for the community tends to also be good for local businesses.”

Attendance at the community events was high this summer, with families and locals gathering. In place for three months, the installations were well used throughout the summer by people looking for a place to sit amid some greenery.
“We had a local artist named Wong who spent several weeks on the site creating some of the pavement art and he is full of stories of how people used the space, how there were regulars who come every day,” said Rotsztain.

“It feels like it was very appreciated,” he added. “This part of the city often doesn’t get as much investment in the arts and culture realm as other areas, so it was a refreshing thing for them to have a public space.”

plazaPOPS recently incorporated as not-for-profit organization

With the aim of creating a sustainable, long-term initiative, plazaPOPS was recently incorporated as a not-for-profit organization with an executive and board of directors.

The project received three years of funding from the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev) through the City of Toronto’s Main Street Recovery and Rebuild program, as well as a Partnership Development Grant. Next year will see an enhanced research project involving U of G sociologists Drs. Mervyn Horgan and Saara Liinamaa, SEDRD’s Dr. Karen Landman, University of Toronto economist Dr. Rafael Gomez and other collaborators.
Local community members will be trained to participate in the research, which aims to understand the economic, social and environmental impact of the plazaPOPS project.

Along with community partners, the team will discuss sites for next year’s installation during the U of G community design studio course to be held in the winter 2023 semester, Stewart said.

“We are trying to create a vibrant city that everyone has access to and are really excited about how this project has grown.”

Explore plazaPOPS

2022: ThistlePOPS

Barren Toronto parking lots have been transforming into inviting pop-up parks

September 14, 2022

By Jack Landau

Link to article

Congested suburban strip mall parking lots are the last place one would expect to encounter pockets of foot and cycling traffic, but for the past few years, some of these car-dominated pedestrian wastelands have been shedding that identity thanks to an ongoing initiative known as plazaPOPS.

The brainchild of Brendan Stewart and Karen Landman, who are both professors of Landscape Architecture at the University of Guelph, as well as author/cartographer Daniel Rotsztain, the project was spearheaded in a 2019 pilot transforming surface parking at Wexford Heights Plaza in Scarborough into an inviting pedestrian environment.

This first installation, known as WexPOPS, occupied just ten parking spots, but its success has created an appetite for even more community pop-ups in other suburban neighbourhoods across Toronto.

In the years since, plazaPOPS — named in a fusion of the strip plazas being transformed with privately-owned public spaces, or POPS — has taken its community-led, low-cost process to lots with an aim to create free and accessible spaces to address a lack of amenities for pedestrians and transit users.

This group of four parking lots spread throughout the Albion Islington Square BIA in North Etobicoke has been repurposed into community spaces until Oct. 24 in a partnership with the Rexdale Community Hub and local BIA.

It may run counter to trends of urban intensification, but pop-up spaces like these actually embrace the conditions of the inner suburbs. Instead of drastically changing the engrained way of life, they open up areas not necessarily designed with foot traffic in mind to new users while supporting businesses hard hit by two years of rolling lockdowns.

Explore plazaPOPS

2022: ThistlePOPS

plazaPOPS looks to create a community hub in Thistletown

August 5, 2022

By Anita Li

Link to article and video

Live in Toronto’s inner suburbs and have no place to hang out?
An innovative new initiative called PlazaPOPS feels your pain, so it’s building unlikely gathering spaces in one underserved community at a time, and in this case the focus is on Thistletown.

Explore plazaPOPS

ResearchPOPS

plazaPOPS receives SSHRC and FedDev funding for new round of pilots!

June 20, 2022

University of Guelph

Link to article

plazaPOPS, a collaborative research initiative that enhances the public realm through publicly accessible pop-up installations within the privately owned parking lots of commercial strip-malls, has received two significant new grants!

Led by Landscape Architecture Assistant Professor Brendan Stewart, in collaboration with MLA’18 graduate Daniel Rotsztain, the initiative has grown over the past three years. The seeds of the idea were developed in Daniel’s Master of Landscape Architecture thesis which led to a 2019 pilot in Wexford Heights, Scarborough — known as ‘WexPOPS’ — funded by Park People’s Public Space Incubator Grant (with financial support from Ken and Eti Greenberg and the Balsam Foundation), as well as the City of Toronto’s BIA Kickstarter grant, and supported by the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development.

Following the success of the pilot, staff from several divisions of the City of Toronto expressed interest in further development of the initiative, and in 2020, joined the research team in a successful Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) grant with a goal to develop a framework for the creation of a sustainable plazaPOPS program. The SSHRC research involved a working group of ten City staff from multiple divisions, who provided input and oversight through a series of virtual workshops in fall 2020 and spring 2021. The partnership led in July 2021 to a $1M grant from the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev). Part of a larger ‘Main Street Recovery and Rebuild program’

that responds to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the FedDev project involves the planning, design, fabrication, installation, and programming of a number of new plazaPOPS installations from 2022 to 2024, with the design of an initial cluster in the north Etobicoke neighbourhood of Rexdale planned to open in July 2022.

A second SSHRC grant, providing three years of funding, was just announced, which will evaluate, document, and communicate the social and economic benefits of this new round of plazaPOPS pilots. To oversee the execution of the projects, plazaPOPS has incorporated as a not-for-profit, and has recruited a board of directors who bring a diversity of perspectives and experiences.

The new SSHRC will involve University of Guelph sociologists Mervyn Horgan and Saara Liinamaa, University of Toronto economist Rafael Gomez, as well as SEDRDs Karen Landman, among many other collaborators. The project will bring numerous opportunities to landscape architecture students within SEDRD, including research assistantships, and the possibility of integration into community design studios. As an initial output from the SSHRC funding, plazaPOPS is aiming to launch a refreshed website in fall 2022. See UofG news release for additional information.

Explore plazaPOPS

2019: WexPOPS

plazaPOPS Converts Unused Parking Into Lively Public Space

March 26, 2020

By Nicolas Carvajal

Link to article

Parking minimums or obligatory parking spaces for developments are part of the reason why North American cities and towns struggle to maintain vibrant atmospheres. Daniel
Rotsztain, a former Pop-Up City team member developed the idea of regenerating strip malls in his Master’s thesis, under the guidance of Brendan Stewart, professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Guelph. The first plazaPOPS popped up in the Toronto neighbourhood of Wexford Heights as a pilot project to demonstrate the benefits of community-based design process.

The innovative part of plazaPOPS is that it recognises privately-owned strip mall parking lots as an essential part of the public realm. This low cost, high impact project demonstrates how public spaces such as parking lots can be greatly improved to serve as community gathering spots, and contribute positively to local businesses. A guide for Toronto on how to enhance its parking lots can be found here.

The planning and making of public spaces need to consider their users through community-based processes like plazaPOPS. Doing so will serve to enhance a city’s streetscape and create stronger local identities in large urban areas such as Toronto.

Explore plazaPOPS

GuelphPOPS

plazaPOPS Installation Adds a Pop of Colour to Reynolds Walk

September 30, 2019

University of Guelph

Link to article

If you’ve strolled Reynolds Walk on campus this September, you may have noticed a pop-up relaxation spot installed next to Branion Plaza. The WexPOPS installation is a portable public gathering place that was relocated to U of G from its initial installation earlier this summer in a strip mall parking lot in Scarborough, Ont.

WexPOPS is the pilot installation of the plazaPOPS Initiative – a design and research project led by master of landscape architecture grad Daniel Rotsztain and U of G landscape architecture Profs. Brendan Stewart and Karen Landman.

“Neighbourhood main streets need accessible gathering spaces to support community life and individual well-being,” says Stewart. “PlazaPOPS is testing a high-impact, low cost model to create such spaces in areas that need them most, all in partnership with local businesses who own the land.”

This summer’s POPS (privately owned public space) installation in Wexford Heights Plaza in Scarborough hosted musical acts, workshops and community events.

Designed with community in mind

WexPOPS features a series of modular planters, benches, tables and umbrellas, all clad in marine plywood and trimmed in cedar. The original installation created a comfortable and sheltered space that framed views of the strip mall.

Ben O’Hara, an MLA grad and sessional instructor in the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, managed the installation’s carpentry. All components were designed as modules that can be reconfigured to suit varying future site conditions and that can be packed flat for easy assembly and storage.

The original installation featured almost 500 plants, which were installed in colour-coded pails recycled from U of G:
> red for native perennials
> orange for annuals
> yellow for edible plants

Most of the native plants were donated to the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority and planted in a stretch of the Meadoway — a utility corridor naturalization project that runs through Scarborough — this September. The annuals and edible plants were brought back to Guelph and incorporated into the installation on campus.

A year of community consultation, planning and design

Retail strip mall plazas are everywhere in suburban North America, Stewart explains. While privately owned, he says, these plazas define main streets and serve as important settings of community life for millions of Canadians. Finding ways to humanize these areas can positively impact many people.
The WexPOPS project was part of a second-year master of landscape architecture design studio this past winter. MLA students worked in teams to develop concepts that were presented and refined through workshops and open houses with Scarborough community members. WexPOPS resulted from more than a year of community consultation, planning and design work.

Stewart and Landman hope to roll out a broader plazaPOPS program across the province.

The reinstallation is supported by the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, the Sustainability Office and Physical Resources. Learn more about plazaPOPS at www.plazaPOPS.ca and on Instagram and Twitter @plaza_pops.

Explore plazaPOPS

Follow us on social media:

Sign up for our newsletter:

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.