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2019: WexPOPS

WexPOPS, a Scarborough ‘oasis,’ aims to prove what plaza spaces can be

By Mike Adler

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WexPOPS is a green “oasis” where you wouldn’t expect one.

Now, its creators want to see what you do there.
Part of the parking lot at Wexford Heights Plaza is now surrounded by 300 planters filled with vegetables and herbs, which will be given away — and wildflowers and grasses, which will grow in a nearby hydro field.

From now through Aug. 18, though, this experiment near a corner of Lawrence and Warden avenues is a place to relax in, and see performances by local musicians and artists.
As vans and taxis circled the installation on July 4, volunteers were putting WexPOPS together in time for this weekend’s Taste of Lawrence festival.

It will be cool to see how it gets used, said Chelsea Braun, who grew up near the plaza and helped fill in a mural by local artist Echo Railton as backdrop for a small wooden stage.

Twenty University of Guelph master of landscape architecture students worked on the project, sharing six designs which were voted on. “None of them were perfectly buildable,” Prof. Brendan Stewart said during the construction.

The result, really a hybrid, aims to prove that a POPS — a priviately-owned public space — in suburban plazas can be versatile and inviting.
People, particularly owners of plaza businesses, can see its potential, said Minaz Asani-Kanji, outreach manager for Park People, a nonprofit group that found funds for WexPOPS.

“It needs to bring business in. If they see it’s a money-maker, then I think they would be open to doing this,” added Asani-Kanji, a Scarborough resident on the project steering committee.


Local companies cut signs for WexPOPS and donated soil. The planters were old recycling bins that the university was throwing out.

On July 28 and Aug. 17, Scarborough Arts has booked performers for WexPOPS — and the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority will lead walks to the emerging Meadoway linear park nearby.

The project team has hired eight young people to care for the plants and the rest of the installation.

Will parts of it be stolen?

Daniel Rotsztain, one of the project’s leaders, hopes that the obvious effort behind WexPOPS will make thieves think twice. But that, too, is part of the experiment.

Studying public life at the plaza, Rotsztain noticed many people come and “hang out in their cars,” never stepping outside.

This summer, that could change.

“The question is, will people get out of their cars to sit here?” Rotsztain asked.


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2019: WexPOPS

Pop-up garden in Toronto has deep roots in Guelph

The wexPOPS space opened on Jul3, 2019. Organizers hope it will encourage people to come together in otherwise drab spaces. – Daniel Rotsztain, provided

By Jonathan Duncan

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“Let’s go hang out in the strip mall parking lot” is probably something you’ve never wanted to say, but that may soon change.

The plazaPOPS project has opened it’s first garden space in Scarborough.

The pop-up parks will feature a variety of plant life, and offer benches and umbrellas to encourage people to embrace the space. It started in the mind of Daniel Rotsztain, with his 2017 masters of landscape architecture thesis at the University of Guelph.

The thesis looked at “pragmatic ways to enhance the public realm for pedestrians,” says Rotsztain.

With the help of U of G professor Brendan Stewart, they concluded there should be a pilot project to gauge the worth of community gathering spaces in private strip-mall parking lots.

“In Guelph, strip malls are kind of dismissed because they’re ugly in architecture, but they’re very vibrant places,” says Rotsztain. “So it was figuring out a way to enhance these places, without erasing the communities that already existed.”

Stewart and Rotsztain say they’ve been working with dozens of people since receiving funding in April 2018.

University of Guelph professor Karen Landman is a co-lead on the project. Stewart says she’s been helping to figure out the planning and research design components of the project.
“Another part of this project is thinking about how it can scale up in future years,” says Stewart. They’ll be measuring the performance, including its impact on parking.

They also integrated the project into a course at the U of G, giving students a chance to add their voice.

The design is intended to be quick to set up/teardown, modular and easy to store, meaning it should see repeated use over the years says Rotsztain.

It was designed and built by Ben O’Hara in Guelph.

The first instalment, WexPOPS, was opened in Scarborough’s Wexford Heights Plaza on July 5th, 2019.

While vandalism is a concern, Stewart and Rotsztain say the community has really embraced the concept, and people will be keeping a close eye on the site.

They’ve been working with a variety of community groups and other local actors, and Stewart says encouraging local stewardship is the best strategy for vandal proofing the site.
“It’s an interesting kind of little community that we’ve tapped into that’s been really supportive and excited to be a part of the project,” says Rotsztain.

Local high schoolers, mostly newcomers from Nigeria, will be employed to care of the garden.
Stewart says they chose the inner suburbs of Toronto because it’s where huge numbers of new Canadians live.

“We need to have strong communities, we need people to be connect and we need people to aware of each other, and not see people as ‘the other’ and all of that kind of thing,” says Stewart.
The project is being funded by the Park People’s Public Space Incubator Grant, which is in turn funded by Ken and Eti Greenberg and the Balsam Foundation.

Others like the U of G, have donated materials and other resources. While the Toronto Region Conversation Authority will take the leftover plants and reuse them in the community.
“We’re trying to think through the life-cycle of everything we use, to minimize waste,” says Stewart.

He says they’ve had a number of inquiries from the U of G, business improvement areas, community groups and others, but they’ll be focusing on the one project for now.
If you’d like to learn more, you can visit the groups website here.

Fun fact: POPS is an acronym for Privately Owned Public Space, says Stewart.

Another concept in the same vein is the “parklet” however those are generally built on public spaces.


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2019: WexPOPS

U of G plazaPOPS Green Space Project Makes Headlines

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Turning a few spaces in a strip mall parking lot into a human-friendly oasis is the vision of the plazaPOPS concept.

Led by U of G School of Environmental Design and Rural Development professors Karen Landman and Brendan Stewart, both in the landscape architecture program, the concept is becoming reality in an iconic suburban Toronto strip mall and is getting a lot of media attention.
Stewart and project co-lead Daniel Rotsztain, a landscape designer and artist, were on CBC Radio’s Fresh Air over the weekend to discuss the concept.

The idea was also explored by Global News Radio’s The Morning Show and by BlogTO and on Toronto.com.

Stewart told Global News Radio that suburban strip malls were primarily designed for the car, but there are many who walk or bus to the malls and contribute to their vibrancy.

“Our project is really about just trying to create better pedestrian facilities and amenities, so that people can take a load off and relax, maybe read a book, and most importantly meet their neighbours,” Stewart said.

Wexford Heights Plaza has undergone a plazaPOPS upgrade, with an enclosed space featuring 360 native plants, some edible, as well as tables and benches. The design was chosen from entries in a landscape architecture design contest at U of G.

Stewart’s research focuses on heritage conservation planning and design, cultural landscape theory, design history, and participatory design practices.

Landman’s research seeks to find ways to make urban agriculture more acceptable by assessing how to design for green space in urban landscapes.

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2019: WexPOPS

Toronto strip malls are about to get more interesting

By Tanya Mok

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Hanging out in the parking lot of a Toronto strip mall may not be your idea of a good time, but it could be this summer.


The exterior of Wexford Heights Plaza (the Scarborough strip mall of film festival fame) just got a big upgrade thanks to a new initiative called plazaPOPS.

The project, which aims to transform the drab areas around suburban strip malls into vibrant community spaces, launched its pilot project WexPOPS today, transforming the plaza parking lot into a little green oasis.

Planters with over 300 plants, including blooming sunflowers and edible herbs, tables, and comfy seats complete with umbrellas and twinkle lights at night now sit on the asphalt across from the diner mainstay Wexford Restaurant.


“As the city densifies, a lot of these strip malls are going to be demolished,” says Daniel Rotsztain (known online as the Urban Geographer) whose Masters thesis was the jump-off point for PlazaPOPS.

“The project was born out of a desire to think about how to urbanize the inner suburbs while working with the existing vibrancy, instead of erasing what’s there.”



According to Rotsztain, the number-one request from local residents and businesses during the consultation process was a green space with more plants.

Led by University of Guelph professors Brendan Stewart and Karen Landman, the $75,000 is the first in what PlazaPOPS hopes will be more pop-up oases in BIAs across the city.

Funded by the Park People’s Public Space Incubator Grant and the City’s Kickstart grant, WexPOPS even has a restaurant directory at the pop-up, with a map that lists all the places to eat in the area.

If you’re heading to Taste of Lawrence this weekend, you’ll be able to see a stage for performances organized by Scarborough Arts, and a mural depicting food culture in the Wexford area by Toronto artist Echo Railton.

“The whole point of this is to support the local businesses while accomplishing city goals,” says Rotsztain. “Small businesses are so important to our identity and to lots of communities in the city.”

WexPOPS will sit at this corner of Warden and Lawrence until August 18.



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2019: WexPOPS

Reinventing Strip Malls – plazaPOPS

By Sharon Costello

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A graduate from the University of Guelph’s landscape architecture program will soon be bringing his master’s thesis to life
in the form of a pop-up community gathering space in Scarborough’s Wexford Heights plaza.

PlazaPOPS are low-cost high impact pop-up community spaces within the privately- owned public spaces (POPS) of Toronto’s strip mall plazas. They are intended to address the lack of amenities for pedestrians and transit users, while improving aesthetics, facilitating community gathering, and attracting pedestrians to local businesses in Toronto’s strip malls. PlazaPOPS are created using modular, context-sensitive approaches that encourage pedestrian participation. The first ever plazaPOPS will be installed in the Wexford Heights plaza parking lot this summer.

The project was initiated in the spring of 2018 by using a Public Space Incubator Grant through Park People, funded by Ken and Eti Greenberg and the Balsam Foundation. The proposal was prepared by Daniel Rotsztain (the Urban
Geographer), and University of Guelph Landscape Architecture professors Brendan Stewart and Karen Landman based
on concepts from Rotsztain’s University of Guelph Masters of Landscape Architecture thesis.

“[Daniel’s thesis] took on this broad topic of thinking of opportunities for enhancing the public realm in commercial strip malls, particularly in the inner suburbs … So, once we started thinking about putting a grant proposal together, we had to quickly find a business improvement area to partner with and to start honing in on a specific community and landowner, and we wound up in Wexford Heights,” Stewart told NRU.

The proposal, which was integrated into a community design studio class for the school of environmental design and rural development at the University of Guelph, resulted in six discrete designs.

“[The designs] were all intended to respond to the same kind of goals and principles,
so they were all about creating community gathering space and enhancing local business activity… but they were each distinct, highlighting a different theme,” said Stewart.

All six designs focused on creating a pop-up pedestrian experience in a unique way. They included a stopover for birds, a community food truck, a colossal loom on which participants could weave, community gardening, the replication of a cozy apartment living room, and venues for hosting cultural markets and musical performances. The team has selected a final design which incorporated elements from the previous designs, based on the feedback received from the community working group and the public. The final design was revealed on June 13.

The plazaPOPS team’s partnership with the Wexford Heights BIA led to additional funding through the city’s Kickstart BIA innovation fund. It also connected the team with Wexford Restaurant owner Tony Kiriakou, who offered 10 parking spaces as the location for the pop-up.



Since POPS are often a result of development application negotiations between the city and developers, the plazaPOPS team had difficulty finding a property-owner willing to give up parking spaces. According to Wexford Heights BIA coordinator Linda Raeside, there’s always parking available in the area because of its size and location, and the Kiriakou saw it as an opportunity to draw attention to businesses in the area.

“[Kiriakou] thought it was a fantastic idea. He likes to becreative and have innovative things happening, and he’s very supportive of the community because he’s been in the community for many, many years.”

All of the designs for the pilot plazaPOPS are modular so they can be stored and redeployed or reconfigured in the future.

“It is intended to be temporary but the idea is that this is a demonstration. We’re trying to test this idea out and were hoping that if it’s successful and people like it, including the local community, but also importantly the local business community… we can continue to work on the program with other BIAs.” said Stewart.

The pilot is also doubling as an active research project being carried out by the university.

“We’re designing a research program for the summer where we’ll be measuring and documenting, and later analyzing and reporting on the actual performance of the space from a social and economic impact perspective. Our hope is by actually collecting data— we will be doing interviews and a public life study—we will
be measuring how it is used and trying to understand what works well and what doesn’t so that if this were to be developed into a broader program, we’d have some evidence to base that on and a real sense of how to do it well,” said Stewart.

The team also collaborated with Scarborough Arts to help coordinate arts and cultural programming in the space, and received donations from Maglin Site Furniture to furnish the pop-up.

The plazaPOPS launch is scheduled to coincide with the Taste of Lawrence Street Festival on July 5th, in order to draw the attention of the 150,000-200,000 people that are typically attracted to the area that weekend.

“It would be something for other strip mall plazas or businesses in the area to want to be involved with once they see it, so were looking forward to [the launch] because it’s been a long process from the initial meeting phase to finally coming to fruition… and we’ll have a finished product that everybody can hopefully enjoy,” said Raeside.

Shaylyn Costello is a student planner reporting for NRU.


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2019: WexPOPS

A new project is going to be animating Toronto’s Strip Malls

plazaPOPS co-lead Daniel Rotsztain spoke to CBC Radio’s Here and Now ahead of the 2019 WexPOPS installation. That day, CBC Radio was broadcasting out of the Scarborough Town Centre mall, as part of wider coverage and focus on projects happening in Scarborough!

Listen here!

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2019: WexPOPS

plazaPOPS coming to Wexford Heights Plaza

By Mike Adler

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As strip malls go, Wexford Heights Plaza is famous already.

It’s inspired a feature film, a documentary about its Wexford Restaurant, and an interactive walking tour.

Still, expect it to gain more notoriety this summer as it hosts plazaPOPS, an experiment in giving passersby something new to see and visit.

Launching at the Taste of Lawrence street festival in July, plazaPOPS lets the community comment on six potential designs — featuring a colossal loom, a stopover for birds, and a programmable community food truck, among other things — by April 12.

What’s chosen may be a hybrid, but plazaPOPS is a chance to try some possibilities for a retail model still common on Toronto’s suburban streets, says project co-lead Daniel Rotsztain.
Plazas are where small businesses set up in places like Wexford in Scarborough. They’re de facto community centres, places where people meet, he added.

Some plaza businesses are thriving, but others aren’t, and “blight is not good for anyone,” said Rotsztain, who has interviewed plaza owners, customers and business owners on what can be done.

Esthetic improvements were welcomed, he found, as long as they bring more people into the plaza. PlazaPOPS tries to do that, Rotsztain said.

PlazaPOPS in Scarborough tries ‘eye-catching’ design to boost business.

“The whole ethos of the project is supporting small businesses.”

Co-lead Brendan Stewart, a landscape architecture professor at University of Guelph, had his students provide the designs, Rotsztain got financial backing from the city and advocacy group Park People.

He secured unanimous support from the Wexford Heights Business Improvement Area, and the project is starting to look like it could be replicated on other suburban streets.

University of Toronto students are creating economic metrics to measure its success, Rotsztain said.

Anthony Kiriakou, who owns the plaza and the family-run diner bearing the neighbourhood’s name, believes plazaPOPS is good for business.
“I like something that’s eye-catching,” he said. “At least like this, you are on the map.”

The project will occupy eight to 10 parking spots, and while getting rid of parking can be “pretty tense,” Rotsztain said many business owners and customers would sacrifice a little.

Open houses for PlazaPOPS are coming to the Arab Community Centre of Toronto on April 12, from 4 to 8 p.m., and the Victoria Village Hub on April 13, from noon to 4 p.m


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2019: WexPOPS

5 new projects receive grants to shake up underused public spaces

By Gilbert Ngabo

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A linear park in the heart of downtown. A green pop-up square in the middle of a strip mall’s parking lots. A train-watching area or a community cafe out of a shipping container.
These are among five community initiatives that have won grants between $15,000 and $50,000 from the Public Space Incubator, a challenge from advocacy group Park People, to implement bold concepts for better use of public spaces across the city.

The announcement comes as Toronto celebrates completion of the first phase of the Bentway, a project that transformed the dull Gardiner Expressway underpass into a skating trail and a vibrant community gathering space. Like the Bentway, the new initiatives aim to liven up some of the city’s unused or underutilized open spaces, and make those spaces more welcoming and engaging for people.

Park People’s manager of policy and planning Jake Tobin Garrett said the group received more than 70 letters of intent for the grants, which were narrowed down to the final 25 applications from which the five winners emerged.

“We knew we would get a lot of interest in this, but we were surprised to receive so many applications,” he said of the program, which was made possible by $340,000 in funding from the Balsam Foundation and renowned urban planner and architect Ken Greenberg and his wife, Eti.

The main objective of the challenge was to solicit ideas that could shake up how we generally view public spaces, Garrett said, noting the effective use of shared space is becoming more important as more people move into the city and into smaller condos and apartments.

“There’s a lot of focus, I think, as we grow as a city and increase in density and we’re seeing all these new people moving in and neighbourhoods sort of changing, to focus on making our collective spaces the best that they can be,” he said.

The winning projects include PlazaPOPS, which will transform the parking space along a strip mall on Lawrence Ave. near Wexford Heights in Scarborough into a parklet for artistic engagement, starting next spring. The pop-up plaza concept originated in San Francisco, and has expanded to other cities.

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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.