Big News: New rodent problems for Chinatown, Kensington Market

Now a high density of rodents in Chinatown shouldn't be surprising...it also has the highest density of restaurants and grocery stores in the city.

When I see Chinatown-Kensington market area I see great opportunity for some residential development. The area is a classic case of how economic fundamentals, when uncontrolled, can kill a neighborhood.
Being a neighborhood that is very accessible and close to the core, Chinatown-Kensington, has always been a highly concentrated area with business and retail. As a result, many different businesses move into the area and area becomes popular with people looking for a diverse shopping area.
Overtime, because of the super competitive nature of a neighborhood, the winners of economic fundamental dance are only a very narrow segment of particular uses, crowding out other businesses that supplied the diversity in the first place.

This is what happened in Chinatown. In its first incarnation, Chinatown started with one successful laundry business started by Sam Ching in the 1870’s.

Sam Ching, started a trend of thousands of Chinese immigrants starting laundry shops in the area, as more and more migrant Chinese started to move in they saw opportunity to open different kinds of businesses, and they opened restaurants and grocery stores. These businesses started to become really popular and profitable; as a result, more and more would be restaurant and grocery store owners starting to prospect the area and they were willing to pay higher rents to landlords than the other businesses (like the laundry shops).

The other businesses in the area started to get crowded out because they couldn’t afford the rents in the area as the rents were going up.

Fast forward to today, the area becomes super saturated with restaurants and grocery shops, driving away other businesses (i.e. to Markham). What’s ironic it’s the diversity of businesses that would create extra traffic to the area which caused the restaurants and grocery shops to be popular in the first place. Chinatown-Kensington market is now a rat infested fad neighborhood.

Toronto should increase the diversity of the area by making it economic viable for developers to increase the number of residential and office buildings available along Spadina (YES CONDO’s). The AGO and Ontario College of Art and Design are doing a great job creating a different type of anchor to attract people, however, it doesn’t make economic sense for a developer to build a condo or office building on Spadina over Markham…that’s why Markham is getting more jobs and Toronto is getting more rats.