Greetings, fellow Scarborough residents.
While economic development in Scarborough has been an important area of focus for SCRO from beginning, SCRO has become increasingly focused of late on the need to retain and grow employment opportunities in Scarborough. Let me explain.
Scarborough was once a thriving industrial community. Those of us with long memories remember the Golden Mile. From the 1950s until the 1990s, large manufacturing plants along Eglinton Avenue turned Scarborough into an economic powerhouse, enabling thousands of Scarborough residents to access good jobs with prosperous employers, with many nearby businesses feeding their supply chains.
That “branch plant” economic model is mostly gone now, but the need for good jobs to support our growing population continues.
Today, the backbone of Scarborough’s economy is our thousands of small businesses: in manufacturing, construction, logistics, services, and retail. They don’t have the same public profile as the large employers of yesteryear but, collectively, they have become the new powerhouse of Scarborough’s economy and important employment launching points for many Scarborough newcomers, helping them and their families to integrate into the Scarborough community.
These businesses need to be nurtured and supported through public policy, so they can prosper. The City of Toronto has an economic action plan to support Toronto’s economy as a whole, but one size doesn’t fit all. A strategy to help Bay Street prosper is bound to look different from a strategy to help Scarborough’s business parks prosper. Each has different strengths and opportunities to be cultivated and different weaknesses and threats to be mitigated. The Scarborough Community Renewal Organization and the Scarborough Business Association have been encouraging our politicians and those who advise them to develop strategic plans for our local economy that are more tailored to these distinctions.
Perhaps the most important thing we can do is to maintain and enhance our employment lands and the thousands of jobs they provide for Scarborough residents. That’s not easy. Our business parks are at risk of being converted to housing, one conversion request at a time. While we all understand the need for more housing, we’re not going to create a prosperous Scarborough if we solve one problem (housing) by creating another one (no jobs).
This goes beyond our business parks. Scarborough needs more office and professional jobs too. We have some, of course: in our anchor institutions (SHN, UTSC, Centennial College, and the Toronto Zoo) and in our business parks. We have some prestigious private sector employers too, including Toyota, CTV, and in the office towers of the Consilium.
But we need to do better, especially at the Consilium, where office vacancy rates remain above the Toronto average. Those of us with long memories will remember the original promise of the Consilium; to create a commercial “node” that spreads economic prosperity beyond the financial district. And it wasn’t just for Scarborough. Commercial nodes were planned for North York and Etobicoke too. Only one of them has been truly successful: North York. Why? They got a subway! The Scarborough subway extension is the key to enabling the original vision of the Consilium to finally be achieved.
Enabling the Consilium to achieve its full commercial potential will do more than simply spread the wealth. It’ll help City planners achieve another important goal: advancing the notion of “fifteen minute
neighbourhoods” in a suburban context, where you can access many of life’s amenities closer to home, including employment, leading to less congestion on our roads, shorter commutes, and an improved quality of Scarborough life.
Imagine: a mix of Scarborough businesses, small, medium and large, across a broad range of industries, supported by public policy and a planning framework that enables them to thrive and provide a broad range of employment opportunities for hundreds of thousands of Scarborough workers. We need an economic development strategy that will take us there over time and a political commitment to see it through.
“What can I do”, you ask?
Become involved in Scarborough affairs! Contact me. We’ll find the right place where your passions and expertise can be put to best use, be it as part of SCRO or in another of Scarborough’s passionate civil society organizations.
As I often say: if we don’t speak for Scarborough, others who don’t live here will speak for us. Let’s work together to shape the future of Scarborough, so it evolves in a way that makes us proud of the place we call home.
Larry Whatmore
President
Scarborough Community Renewal Organization Larry.Whatmore@rogers.com
(416) 562-2101
