YD SQUARE KYLE RAE INTERVIEW by Michael McClelland
Posted: Sat Feb 12, 2022 11:35 am
Michael McClelland
The topic is Dundas Square.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
Yep.
Michael McClelland
Which I think should be called Kyle Rae Square because you basically did it right? And so, could you just briefly give us the origin story. Like why did it happen and how did it happen?
Kyle Rae (Guest)
It started back around 1994.The economy had not recovered from the recession of 1988-89, and in fact I would say, it didn't recover until after 1998-99 -- so we were in the middle of the recession. I can remember one day sitting with Mayor June Rowlands in her office and looking out from her office onto Queen St and there was no traffic on Queen St. There was like 11:00 o'clock in the morning.
She was commenting about how disastrous the economy was, how employment and office towers were emptying, how many people were losing their jobs and the banks were shifting their back-of-office operations to the suburbs - so downtown Toronto was in a real mess.
Then in ‘94 we started getting comments in the Toronto Star about the disastrous downtown wards and it focused on me. Ian Eckert would write editorial pieces in the Toronto Star complaining about the state of affairs in downtown. I realized I needed to do something and take some initiative given the ward that I represented was right downtown on Yonge St. and started talking to the businesses in the area - the major businesses like the Bay, the Eaton Center, TD Bank, and the Delta Chelsea who were furious about what was happening. Also, if you recall we had experienced the Rodney King riot that had really negatively affected the businesses on Yonge St. and they started having to put those metal covers on their windows at night after that, because the windows had been smashed and stuff stolen. I think it was 92, there was a real downturn in safety and the commercial viability of that street.
And although there were people who are trying to argue that we needed to bring back the Downtown Business Council, I had remembered the Downtown Business Council and it was pretty useless. It had been ended up being at the end of its life. Just the general managers of the property managers of the big buildings—it wasn't even the owners of the building, there was no connection.
Michael McClelland
Yeah.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
I figured that I'm not going to try and fix the whole downtown, but we know that Yonge street is the backbone. It's the destination, it's got the subway. It needs to be fixed, it needs to be cleaned up, it needs to be made safer. You know, there was a great deal of criminality going on with drug dealing and theft in the area. The big businesses were complaining, but also the small businesses like Barbarians and the Senator restaurant.
Even some of the owners of the buildings were complaining and so I forced those two groups together. Although they did not like each other because the small businesses felt that the Eaton Center had killed Yonge St and because all the main retail had left Yonge St to go into the mall, [which] contributed to the downturn of Yonge St. There was a great deal of resentment by the small property owners and the retail property owners,
It was hard, but I got David Crombie [former Toronto mayor] to come in and chair three meetings at the Delta Chelsea to try and sort out what we could do. I got the city to provide like $250,000 with the understanding that if the private businesses on Yonge St raised $150,000 then we, [the city], would release the $250,000 as well so there would be a good amount of money to do research. That happened within a month. They started evaluating the street; what were the strengths, weaknesses, where are the heritage buildings? What can we do in reimagining the street?
Also, let's remember this is like 1994-95, in a very different commercial period of time than we're in today, and even two years prior to today, right? There was a completely different attitude towards retail. This was 25 years ago.
It’s a long time ago that we were working on this project. We were trying to imagine how to do it and the Business Association, which was finally formed, made this recommendation to the city about how to reform it. They hired Ron Lesconi to do the research, and the only reason he got hired, in my opinion, is because he had commercial real estate planning experience - he wasn't a community planner.
He had worked for Owen Why, he had done the retail on some Wharf in New York and in San Francisco (Pritzker square?). He had a great deal of experience in retail and redevelopment, so I thought he was a great catch. I had never met him before. They hired him and he made these recommendations about what to do with the square and what the square was meant to be. Was it the public open space you usually find In European cities, in front of the City Hall, or the cathedral or-- the public square. There was no public square in the middle of the downtown.
Nathan Phillips Square was too controlled and it was it was not on the main street, but there was a feeling that there needed to be in the commercial hub of the city—in that kind of public space. They tried to imagine how we could improve the quality of the retail by providing an anchor, like what we've got now at 10 Dundas East, which was the movie theaters and retail, and then other buildings would be included as well and it's the torch--what we called the torch, but it's now CP24 or CTV (I always get them mixed up) and other parts that needed to provide a frame around the public square. The intent of the public square was for it to be unprogrammed-- that it wanted to be as clean as possible for all sorts of different uses. And that if we're going to have programming they needed to be on the walls around the square. So that's where the concept of the oversized signs [came from], big signs to help frame this open space and keep it as clean as possible. And I don’t mean clean in a sanitary way, but like what you call a black box in the theatre world - you can do anything in this [space]: come in and programme it in whatever way you want.
So that was the intent for the square. I think Kim Storey and Jim Brown did a magnificent job. They provided the city with a plan after going through an international competition and they made this recommendation.
Michael McClelland
So now if we move forward to the present day, what are the pros and cons about what's worked and what hasn't worked? What suggestions might you make that you think would be an improvement?
Kyle Rae (Guest)
Well, you know, I don't go through the square very often—at least not in the last two years because we've been locked down. But I know that when I when I had left City Hall and started a consulting firm with Chris Fibs, we had offices in 10 Dundas East and we would go and get lunch and take it into the square. Sitting in the square to have lunch and it looks fabulous on a sunny day and then going back into work. I thought it worked really well.
Michael McClelland
OK.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
I think you know there's some little tweaking I would have done. For example, Jim [James] and Kim had been able to source a wonderful granite in Italy that was green. And somehow a member of council got lobbied by some Quebec firm who said “why you going to an Italian provider when I can do it?” Well, take a look at what's on the square - it's not green, it's not. It was a Holiday who intervened and convinced council. Why spend money in Italy when we can get a Canadian product, but the Canadian product was not the intent. The plan was to sort of try and mimic grass, which of course you could not put down on a well-traveled space without having to replace the grass every three months.
Michael McClelland
So what do you think about the signage? I guess that's the point.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
The signage in the square or the signage outside the square.
Michael McClelland
Generally.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
Well, I think there's two things: I think that there's been. There's signage that has been added in the last, I guess five years or four years, which I think is a distraction. That was not the intent of the square--the square was to be free of that and let the signs around the square be the message. The City gets a piece of the revenue from that, right? There's a sign tax that we got around 2009-2010 from the provincial government for those oversized or magnificent or extraordinary signs - there's a term in the industry - but those signs are getting taxed by the city, so there's a revenue stream off them. I would have preferred to increase that revenue stream by increasing the tax and keeping the square clean.
I think there are people who hate the square, so they're quite ready to junk it up as much as they can. There are people who don't like the square.
I'm not surprised, you know, I heard tell people wanted to just get rid of it.
I don't know how you do that...
Michael McClelland
I remember going to a celebratory lunch at Barbarians with you and a couple of other people celebrating this start to the square. I think it was after the expiration is we're done and there was a lot of pride for the square.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
Yes! It provided new retail-- I often give a presentation every year to Ryerson students in their third or fourth year in the planning department, and I give a slide show about the transition and the work that we did. I end up talking about how what we did is we threw a pebble into a pool--of the downtown and have since watched the ripples and how the investment has begun to creep. Now it's quite substantial that reinvestment in the downtown, but especially in the part of the city east of Yonge St, because we didn't have that before. For most of my career at City Hall, almost all the development happened on the West side of Yonge St, the Entertainment District. The reinvestment was happening there--and East downtown? Nobody wanted to live there.
But that's changed. And that, I think, had a lot to do with the city taking an interest in what was going on, on Yonge Street, at Yonge and Dundas, about improving the quality of retail, about improving the safety issues in the area. You know, as an openly gay man, back in the in the 80s, I wouldn't walk down Yonge St between College and Dundas—it was dangerous.
You know, for women, for gays, it was not safe. With the drug dealing that was occurring, the street related gambling, which also had violence attached to it because of people fighting over gambling. They were openly dealing on the corners of the Eaton Center and on the outside of the Eaton Centre. There was a lot of stuff going on that made people really uncomfortable. I can remember when we started the process, how the Eaton Centre talked about how people came into the Eaton Centre, either from Yonge Street, from the Queen St entrance, or up from the subway--and they walk up to Dundas, they look out onto Dundas and they wouldn't go any further— because it didn't feel safe. In fact, the Delta Chelsea used to give directions to people, they had little flyers for people who were staying in the hotel, saying to them, if you're going to go to the Eaton Centre, take this route: go over to Bay St, go down Bay and then go into the Eaton Centre. Don't go down Yonge Street into the Eaton Centre.
Michael McClelland
Really!
Kyle Rae (Guest)
Because tourists were freaked out.
Michael McClelland
Wow, wow.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
Because it didn't feel like the rest of Toronto. It really felt very different. Also, one of the things that I would just add about the oversized signs, what they provided (in my mind), was a source of light in the square. One of the things --before we ended up going with the square solution--was trying to get the city to increase the lighting on Yonge St. and they wouldn't do it. If you recall on Yonge St., down in that part, the lighting were these white blobs that were affixed to the buildings and they had very limited impact. The lighting was terrible on Yonge Street. I was constantly trying to get the guy with the light meter from public works and he would go say “Oh it's fine. It's fine-- No, no, no.” I couldn't do anything! But the public didn't like it, the lighting was poor. Tourists didn't like it. But the city wouldn't do it. So, the signs I think helped in bringing in more light and making it feel more alive and safer.
Michael McClelland
Yeah, what about now? There's a commentary about it being too heavily programmed.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
I can't answer that for you. I'm not there frequently [enough] to see if it's being programmed. I don't have a problem with it being programmed because every time there's commercial programming that occurs, the funds from that program being paid for by the whoever is wanting to put on a show there, helps making [the square] available to charitable groups. So, I don't know if I have a complaint about commercial versus non-commercial there.
Michael McClelland
OK.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
There's a synergy between them to try and extract the money out of the rental fees so that non-profits can use the square too.
Michael McClelland
Well, that's great. You've answered so many questions just so directly. It's kind of crazy.
This little booklet is going to be on signage generally, and we're using Dundas Square as an example, but what do you think about signage generally? I know the city tries like crazy to control the size of signage.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
I agree with it, and while it needs to be controlled, you can't paint the city with one brush, and when you've got a commercial area like Yonge-Dundas Square over Yorkville/Bloor West, between Avenue Road and Church—there.
Michael McClelland
Yeah.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
There’s a different expectation now, you know there's a great sign on the CP24 or City TV. You know there's a huge sign conical sign? We were very clear that signage would not be allowed on the back end of the cone--it could only face into the square because we didn't want to pollute with light and advertising into the residential area on the other side, on Church St and Sherbourne. We worked with the Residents’ Association and they were thrilled that we were going to curtail it. It would not be able to shine into their neighborhood-- I believe that's really important--residential neighborhoods should not be subjected to signage.
Michael McClelland
I think actually, you're telling the story about how Dundas Square got created in the first place. Any other naming opportunities for Dundas Square? When they get rid of the word Dundas?
Kyle Rae (Guest)
I'm watching that from a distance, the Dundas issue and other naming issues that Ryerson is going through right now. Those of us who have been teaching there, now it’s called X University.
Michael McClelland
Yeah, exactly.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
But I think it'd be really wise if we stopped naming things after people because you don't know what you're going to uncover years later. I just don't think we need to name buildings and squares after people. I don't think so.
Michael McClelland
Yeah, so that's absolutely wise.
[ERA] launched the idea that we wanted to do a little book on signage and one of the drivers was that right now on Yonge St, the City has said that “we're creating a historic district on much of Yonge Street and therefore we don't want any signage.” But every historic photograph you pull up…
Kyle Rae (Guest)
It's crammed full of it!!!
Michael McClelland
It's crammed full of it!! If the City listened and their reason with direct conflict.
Between city policy and reality.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
There's a lot of other things we can do. I used to say that all the time 20 years ago, dealing with this. Have you taken a look at the photo of Yonge St in 1910. Go take a look at the photographs--almost every surface has a sign on it.
Michael McClelland
Yeah, it's a bit like the context of Chinatown now, where Chinatown is just loaded with signage. We’ve done a number of projects on Yonge Street, like 5 Saint Joseph and further north, which are beautiful buildings, but they're striped bare, they're not painted brick. There's nothing. There are no painted signs, there's no projecting signs, it’s very discreet.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
Yep. Right?
Michael McClelland
And if we did that to the whole of Yonge Street, it would be drab, desperately drab, and so we followed all the all the must choose.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
But there's something else that you said that made think of. There's a trite truism that one hears an awful lot when you talk about signs and that is “a sign of no business is a business with no signs.”
Michael McClelland
Yeah, exactly.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
A business needs to have signs to be able to make people aware where they are, what they sell.
Signs are an important part of the retail dynamic-- so it can be tasteful or it could be riotous. And I would say 1910 Yonge Street was riotous!
Michael McClelland
Yeah. I think it would've been bright and yousee it also in the 1950s. You see people driving up and down Yonge Street to look at all the signs and they're all flashing neon and nightclubs and stuff like that.
Michael McClelland
I think that's going to be the tenor of this book.
We've had a huge fight with the City about a painted sign and wanting to redo the painted sign and they said it's not heritage. We said, well it matches exactly the painted sign that was there.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
Great.
Michael McClelland
Uh, so.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
Was it-- what’s his name? Was the name of that firm that did the mural? No, you're right.
Michael McClelland
No, it's a very simple. It was a very simple one. It wasn't a very classy looking sign, but it was on the side wall. That's the kind of issue that we want to address and actually kind of celebrate signage a bit. Although I think there's still criticism from a lot of people about Dundas Square, and I think the signs are too garish or too loud, or the sense they’re too big.
But I guess you get that too.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
I have no problem with the size of them, I don't find them garish. What's important is that they're maintained properly so that that the panels flip when they should, or they don't get stuck. You know, we had a problem with the first sign that was in the Square, which was meant for information about activities in the Square right at the entrance down into the TTC. That sign—quickly, like in a matter of a year or two, fell way behind technically. The pixels were lousy, the color was bad, and it was because at the time it was--- like now there's a new generation of pixel signs and we had missed it in the first one and it took forever to make the owner come in with the new one and now there's a decent one in there.
Michael McClelland
Good, OK, that's good.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
Yeah so, but there was a technological problem.
I'll try and think of a name for the square.
Michael McClelland
Yeah, yeah, I mean and if it's not a person.
I don't know. I think Tiananmen Square comes to mind.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
Well, you know the first event that happened there even before it opened was a peace rally against Bush going into Iraq.
Michael McClelland
Oh, really.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
Yeah. Bush Junior.
Michael McClelland
Well, it's interesting because that square has been open to many more people than Nathan Phillips Square, so there's all kinds of ethnic, suburban, events where they say, let's meet downtown and that's very cool. You see the most varied kinds of community groups meeting up there.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
There was a Saudi Arabian group that was there once one weekend.
In Toronto, the Turkish community coalesced in Scarborough, because there's a school in Scarborough teaching Turkish to children. And that is their base, but they wanted to--they said this-- they wanted to show themselves to the people of Toronto.
Michael McClelland
Yeah. Oh wow.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
That's that, I love that.
Michael McClelland
That's exactly what I think happens is these groups that live in the suburbs or they're coming downtown for a big event? Where do they do it? They don't do it at Nathan Phillips Square.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
There's no one walking through there on a Saturday or a Sunday.
Michael McClelland
Yeah.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
That intersection has the highest pedestrian count of any intersection in Canada because of the TTC--surface and underground --because of Ryerson students, because of the Eaton Center. A million people go through the Eaton Centre each week, they have counters on all the doors.
That's a hell of a lot of people. So, if you want people to see what your group is doing, you don't go to Nathan Phillips Square.
Michael McClelland
Yeah, yeah.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
You know and so I'm really proud of that. Like it's Event Square! But the [Iraq War] peace event was the first one.
The topic is Dundas Square.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
Yep.
Michael McClelland
Which I think should be called Kyle Rae Square because you basically did it right? And so, could you just briefly give us the origin story. Like why did it happen and how did it happen?
Kyle Rae (Guest)
It started back around 1994.The economy had not recovered from the recession of 1988-89, and in fact I would say, it didn't recover until after 1998-99 -- so we were in the middle of the recession. I can remember one day sitting with Mayor June Rowlands in her office and looking out from her office onto Queen St and there was no traffic on Queen St. There was like 11:00 o'clock in the morning.
She was commenting about how disastrous the economy was, how employment and office towers were emptying, how many people were losing their jobs and the banks were shifting their back-of-office operations to the suburbs - so downtown Toronto was in a real mess.
Then in ‘94 we started getting comments in the Toronto Star about the disastrous downtown wards and it focused on me. Ian Eckert would write editorial pieces in the Toronto Star complaining about the state of affairs in downtown. I realized I needed to do something and take some initiative given the ward that I represented was right downtown on Yonge St. and started talking to the businesses in the area - the major businesses like the Bay, the Eaton Center, TD Bank, and the Delta Chelsea who were furious about what was happening. Also, if you recall we had experienced the Rodney King riot that had really negatively affected the businesses on Yonge St. and they started having to put those metal covers on their windows at night after that, because the windows had been smashed and stuff stolen. I think it was 92, there was a real downturn in safety and the commercial viability of that street.
And although there were people who are trying to argue that we needed to bring back the Downtown Business Council, I had remembered the Downtown Business Council and it was pretty useless. It had been ended up being at the end of its life. Just the general managers of the property managers of the big buildings—it wasn't even the owners of the building, there was no connection.
Michael McClelland
Yeah.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
I figured that I'm not going to try and fix the whole downtown, but we know that Yonge street is the backbone. It's the destination, it's got the subway. It needs to be fixed, it needs to be cleaned up, it needs to be made safer. You know, there was a great deal of criminality going on with drug dealing and theft in the area. The big businesses were complaining, but also the small businesses like Barbarians and the Senator restaurant.
Even some of the owners of the buildings were complaining and so I forced those two groups together. Although they did not like each other because the small businesses felt that the Eaton Center had killed Yonge St and because all the main retail had left Yonge St to go into the mall, [which] contributed to the downturn of Yonge St. There was a great deal of resentment by the small property owners and the retail property owners,
It was hard, but I got David Crombie [former Toronto mayor] to come in and chair three meetings at the Delta Chelsea to try and sort out what we could do. I got the city to provide like $250,000 with the understanding that if the private businesses on Yonge St raised $150,000 then we, [the city], would release the $250,000 as well so there would be a good amount of money to do research. That happened within a month. They started evaluating the street; what were the strengths, weaknesses, where are the heritage buildings? What can we do in reimagining the street?
Also, let's remember this is like 1994-95, in a very different commercial period of time than we're in today, and even two years prior to today, right? There was a completely different attitude towards retail. This was 25 years ago.
It’s a long time ago that we were working on this project. We were trying to imagine how to do it and the Business Association, which was finally formed, made this recommendation to the city about how to reform it. They hired Ron Lesconi to do the research, and the only reason he got hired, in my opinion, is because he had commercial real estate planning experience - he wasn't a community planner.
He had worked for Owen Why, he had done the retail on some Wharf in New York and in San Francisco (Pritzker square?). He had a great deal of experience in retail and redevelopment, so I thought he was a great catch. I had never met him before. They hired him and he made these recommendations about what to do with the square and what the square was meant to be. Was it the public open space you usually find In European cities, in front of the City Hall, or the cathedral or-- the public square. There was no public square in the middle of the downtown.
Nathan Phillips Square was too controlled and it was it was not on the main street, but there was a feeling that there needed to be in the commercial hub of the city—in that kind of public space. They tried to imagine how we could improve the quality of the retail by providing an anchor, like what we've got now at 10 Dundas East, which was the movie theaters and retail, and then other buildings would be included as well and it's the torch--what we called the torch, but it's now CP24 or CTV (I always get them mixed up) and other parts that needed to provide a frame around the public square. The intent of the public square was for it to be unprogrammed-- that it wanted to be as clean as possible for all sorts of different uses. And that if we're going to have programming they needed to be on the walls around the square. So that's where the concept of the oversized signs [came from], big signs to help frame this open space and keep it as clean as possible. And I don’t mean clean in a sanitary way, but like what you call a black box in the theatre world - you can do anything in this [space]: come in and programme it in whatever way you want.
So that was the intent for the square. I think Kim Storey and Jim Brown did a magnificent job. They provided the city with a plan after going through an international competition and they made this recommendation.
Michael McClelland
So now if we move forward to the present day, what are the pros and cons about what's worked and what hasn't worked? What suggestions might you make that you think would be an improvement?
Kyle Rae (Guest)
Well, you know, I don't go through the square very often—at least not in the last two years because we've been locked down. But I know that when I when I had left City Hall and started a consulting firm with Chris Fibs, we had offices in 10 Dundas East and we would go and get lunch and take it into the square. Sitting in the square to have lunch and it looks fabulous on a sunny day and then going back into work. I thought it worked really well.
Michael McClelland
OK.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
I think you know there's some little tweaking I would have done. For example, Jim [James] and Kim had been able to source a wonderful granite in Italy that was green. And somehow a member of council got lobbied by some Quebec firm who said “why you going to an Italian provider when I can do it?” Well, take a look at what's on the square - it's not green, it's not. It was a Holiday who intervened and convinced council. Why spend money in Italy when we can get a Canadian product, but the Canadian product was not the intent. The plan was to sort of try and mimic grass, which of course you could not put down on a well-traveled space without having to replace the grass every three months.
Michael McClelland
So what do you think about the signage? I guess that's the point.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
The signage in the square or the signage outside the square.
Michael McClelland
Generally.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
Well, I think there's two things: I think that there's been. There's signage that has been added in the last, I guess five years or four years, which I think is a distraction. That was not the intent of the square--the square was to be free of that and let the signs around the square be the message. The City gets a piece of the revenue from that, right? There's a sign tax that we got around 2009-2010 from the provincial government for those oversized or magnificent or extraordinary signs - there's a term in the industry - but those signs are getting taxed by the city, so there's a revenue stream off them. I would have preferred to increase that revenue stream by increasing the tax and keeping the square clean.
I think there are people who hate the square, so they're quite ready to junk it up as much as they can. There are people who don't like the square.
I'm not surprised, you know, I heard tell people wanted to just get rid of it.
I don't know how you do that...
Michael McClelland
I remember going to a celebratory lunch at Barbarians with you and a couple of other people celebrating this start to the square. I think it was after the expiration is we're done and there was a lot of pride for the square.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
Yes! It provided new retail-- I often give a presentation every year to Ryerson students in their third or fourth year in the planning department, and I give a slide show about the transition and the work that we did. I end up talking about how what we did is we threw a pebble into a pool--of the downtown and have since watched the ripples and how the investment has begun to creep. Now it's quite substantial that reinvestment in the downtown, but especially in the part of the city east of Yonge St, because we didn't have that before. For most of my career at City Hall, almost all the development happened on the West side of Yonge St, the Entertainment District. The reinvestment was happening there--and East downtown? Nobody wanted to live there.
But that's changed. And that, I think, had a lot to do with the city taking an interest in what was going on, on Yonge Street, at Yonge and Dundas, about improving the quality of retail, about improving the safety issues in the area. You know, as an openly gay man, back in the in the 80s, I wouldn't walk down Yonge St between College and Dundas—it was dangerous.
You know, for women, for gays, it was not safe. With the drug dealing that was occurring, the street related gambling, which also had violence attached to it because of people fighting over gambling. They were openly dealing on the corners of the Eaton Center and on the outside of the Eaton Centre. There was a lot of stuff going on that made people really uncomfortable. I can remember when we started the process, how the Eaton Centre talked about how people came into the Eaton Centre, either from Yonge Street, from the Queen St entrance, or up from the subway--and they walk up to Dundas, they look out onto Dundas and they wouldn't go any further— because it didn't feel safe. In fact, the Delta Chelsea used to give directions to people, they had little flyers for people who were staying in the hotel, saying to them, if you're going to go to the Eaton Centre, take this route: go over to Bay St, go down Bay and then go into the Eaton Centre. Don't go down Yonge Street into the Eaton Centre.
Michael McClelland
Really!
Kyle Rae (Guest)
Because tourists were freaked out.
Michael McClelland
Wow, wow.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
Because it didn't feel like the rest of Toronto. It really felt very different. Also, one of the things that I would just add about the oversized signs, what they provided (in my mind), was a source of light in the square. One of the things --before we ended up going with the square solution--was trying to get the city to increase the lighting on Yonge St. and they wouldn't do it. If you recall on Yonge St., down in that part, the lighting were these white blobs that were affixed to the buildings and they had very limited impact. The lighting was terrible on Yonge Street. I was constantly trying to get the guy with the light meter from public works and he would go say “Oh it's fine. It's fine-- No, no, no.” I couldn't do anything! But the public didn't like it, the lighting was poor. Tourists didn't like it. But the city wouldn't do it. So, the signs I think helped in bringing in more light and making it feel more alive and safer.
Michael McClelland
Yeah, what about now? There's a commentary about it being too heavily programmed.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
I can't answer that for you. I'm not there frequently [enough] to see if it's being programmed. I don't have a problem with it being programmed because every time there's commercial programming that occurs, the funds from that program being paid for by the whoever is wanting to put on a show there, helps making [the square] available to charitable groups. So, I don't know if I have a complaint about commercial versus non-commercial there.
Michael McClelland
OK.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
There's a synergy between them to try and extract the money out of the rental fees so that non-profits can use the square too.
Michael McClelland
Well, that's great. You've answered so many questions just so directly. It's kind of crazy.
This little booklet is going to be on signage generally, and we're using Dundas Square as an example, but what do you think about signage generally? I know the city tries like crazy to control the size of signage.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
I agree with it, and while it needs to be controlled, you can't paint the city with one brush, and when you've got a commercial area like Yonge-Dundas Square over Yorkville/Bloor West, between Avenue Road and Church—there.
Michael McClelland
Yeah.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
There’s a different expectation now, you know there's a great sign on the CP24 or City TV. You know there's a huge sign conical sign? We were very clear that signage would not be allowed on the back end of the cone--it could only face into the square because we didn't want to pollute with light and advertising into the residential area on the other side, on Church St and Sherbourne. We worked with the Residents’ Association and they were thrilled that we were going to curtail it. It would not be able to shine into their neighborhood-- I believe that's really important--residential neighborhoods should not be subjected to signage.
Michael McClelland
I think actually, you're telling the story about how Dundas Square got created in the first place. Any other naming opportunities for Dundas Square? When they get rid of the word Dundas?
Kyle Rae (Guest)
I'm watching that from a distance, the Dundas issue and other naming issues that Ryerson is going through right now. Those of us who have been teaching there, now it’s called X University.
Michael McClelland
Yeah, exactly.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
But I think it'd be really wise if we stopped naming things after people because you don't know what you're going to uncover years later. I just don't think we need to name buildings and squares after people. I don't think so.
Michael McClelland
Yeah, so that's absolutely wise.
[ERA] launched the idea that we wanted to do a little book on signage and one of the drivers was that right now on Yonge St, the City has said that “we're creating a historic district on much of Yonge Street and therefore we don't want any signage.” But every historic photograph you pull up…
Kyle Rae (Guest)
It's crammed full of it!!!
Michael McClelland
It's crammed full of it!! If the City listened and their reason with direct conflict.
Between city policy and reality.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
There's a lot of other things we can do. I used to say that all the time 20 years ago, dealing with this. Have you taken a look at the photo of Yonge St in 1910. Go take a look at the photographs--almost every surface has a sign on it.
Michael McClelland
Yeah, it's a bit like the context of Chinatown now, where Chinatown is just loaded with signage. We’ve done a number of projects on Yonge Street, like 5 Saint Joseph and further north, which are beautiful buildings, but they're striped bare, they're not painted brick. There's nothing. There are no painted signs, there's no projecting signs, it’s very discreet.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
Yep. Right?
Michael McClelland
And if we did that to the whole of Yonge Street, it would be drab, desperately drab, and so we followed all the all the must choose.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
But there's something else that you said that made think of. There's a trite truism that one hears an awful lot when you talk about signs and that is “a sign of no business is a business with no signs.”
Michael McClelland
Yeah, exactly.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
A business needs to have signs to be able to make people aware where they are, what they sell.
Signs are an important part of the retail dynamic-- so it can be tasteful or it could be riotous. And I would say 1910 Yonge Street was riotous!
Michael McClelland
Yeah. I think it would've been bright and yousee it also in the 1950s. You see people driving up and down Yonge Street to look at all the signs and they're all flashing neon and nightclubs and stuff like that.
Michael McClelland
I think that's going to be the tenor of this book.
We've had a huge fight with the City about a painted sign and wanting to redo the painted sign and they said it's not heritage. We said, well it matches exactly the painted sign that was there.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
Great.
Michael McClelland
Uh, so.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
Was it-- what’s his name? Was the name of that firm that did the mural? No, you're right.
Michael McClelland
No, it's a very simple. It was a very simple one. It wasn't a very classy looking sign, but it was on the side wall. That's the kind of issue that we want to address and actually kind of celebrate signage a bit. Although I think there's still criticism from a lot of people about Dundas Square, and I think the signs are too garish or too loud, or the sense they’re too big.
But I guess you get that too.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
I have no problem with the size of them, I don't find them garish. What's important is that they're maintained properly so that that the panels flip when they should, or they don't get stuck. You know, we had a problem with the first sign that was in the Square, which was meant for information about activities in the Square right at the entrance down into the TTC. That sign—quickly, like in a matter of a year or two, fell way behind technically. The pixels were lousy, the color was bad, and it was because at the time it was--- like now there's a new generation of pixel signs and we had missed it in the first one and it took forever to make the owner come in with the new one and now there's a decent one in there.
Michael McClelland
Good, OK, that's good.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
Yeah so, but there was a technological problem.
I'll try and think of a name for the square.
Michael McClelland
Yeah, yeah, I mean and if it's not a person.
I don't know. I think Tiananmen Square comes to mind.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
Well, you know the first event that happened there even before it opened was a peace rally against Bush going into Iraq.
Michael McClelland
Oh, really.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
Yeah. Bush Junior.
Michael McClelland
Well, it's interesting because that square has been open to many more people than Nathan Phillips Square, so there's all kinds of ethnic, suburban, events where they say, let's meet downtown and that's very cool. You see the most varied kinds of community groups meeting up there.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
There was a Saudi Arabian group that was there once one weekend.
In Toronto, the Turkish community coalesced in Scarborough, because there's a school in Scarborough teaching Turkish to children. And that is their base, but they wanted to--they said this-- they wanted to show themselves to the people of Toronto.
Michael McClelland
Yeah. Oh wow.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
That's that, I love that.
Michael McClelland
That's exactly what I think happens is these groups that live in the suburbs or they're coming downtown for a big event? Where do they do it? They don't do it at Nathan Phillips Square.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
There's no one walking through there on a Saturday or a Sunday.
Michael McClelland
Yeah.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
That intersection has the highest pedestrian count of any intersection in Canada because of the TTC--surface and underground --because of Ryerson students, because of the Eaton Center. A million people go through the Eaton Centre each week, they have counters on all the doors.
That's a hell of a lot of people. So, if you want people to see what your group is doing, you don't go to Nathan Phillips Square.
Michael McClelland
Yeah, yeah.
Kyle Rae (Guest)
You know and so I'm really proud of that. Like it's Event Square! But the [Iraq War] peace event was the first one.