For a while there yesterday, the electronic hills were alive with rumours that Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) would soon be moving to a new store location on Queen Street West. The word was that the the specialty outdoor-gear retailer's current King Street West home had been sold to a developer, and MEC planned to move to the two main floors of an infill building slated to replace the decades-old parking lot at the corner of Queen and Soho Streets. A few hours later one source of the rumour Tweeted a retraction, but the original story is still up.
UPDATE: Downtown Toronto's current MEC store site has not been sold, nor has it been listed for sale. We apologize: http://t.co/3NzuS4VpuF
— RETAIL-INSIDER (@RetailInsider_) January 23, 2014
A lot of people think development at Queen and Soho is past due. The Queen/Peter/Soho intersection is awkward and disrupts traffic flow, and new construction going in offers an opportunity to fix the corner by angling Soho down to meet Peter. Failing that, Toronto cycling advocate Dave Meslin proposes a cool (and MEC-appropriate, even) alternative solution that's been tried in Europe, but it's probably too radical for straitlaced Toronto. A MEC store could be a good fit for the corner both in terms of square footage and demographic—and after all, what better place for tree-huggers than the site of the Hug Me Tree?
· Big Changes Coming to Queen Street West With MEC Moving In [BuzzBuzzHome]
· Mountain Equipment Co-op Ready to Plant Flag on North York Site [North York Mirror]
· Queen and Soho/Then and Now [Lost Toronto]
· Queen West and Soho Character to Change as Parking Lot Awaits Redevelopment [Urban Toronto]