An old macaroni factory fills the commercial missing middle

Drive along Parkdale’s King Street West from about Gwynne Avenue to Roncesvalles Avenue in Toronto and, using both hands, you’ll run out of fingers if counting the three- and four-storey rental apartment buildings. And I don’t mean the postwar buildings, but rather the more ornate examples built in the first decades of the 20th century that resemble New York brownstones. With the current housing crisis Toronto is facing, it is buildings such as these – the missing middle to use a popular term – that we must not only preserve but emulate when it comes to the construction of new housing in older parts of the city.

But housing the populace on Toronto’s leafy and supremely walkable streets is only one half of the equation. There is another missing middle: small, flexible buildings that can house small businesses and startups. And, once again, part of the answer may come from the city’s pre-existing stock of early-20th-century, small brick-and-beam warehouses – many of which are hiding in plain sight on those same high streets.