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.”
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.
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
