“Partydale” is getting a time-out. New restaurants, bars, bakeries, rooftop patios or “places of amusement” in the Parkdale area (Queen St. West between Roncesvalles Ave. and Dufferin St.) have been banned for a year as the city completes a study on changing the area zoning bylaw.

“I’m worried that the neighbourhood is hitting a tipping point,” said Councillor Gord Perks (Ward 14, Parkdale-High Park) who introduced the moratorium to city council after noting the constant stream of liquor licence applications in the area and complaints from residents about vandalism, noise, garbage and congestion.

“We’re already at a point where a third of all the businesses in the area are restaurants. We’re at the point where sidewalks are jammed every Friday night at 1 a.m.”

The interim bylaw, passed by council on Oct. 30, 2012, requires no advance notice or community consultation — avoiding a rush of last-minute hopping on the trendy Parkdale bandwagon.

The controversial tool, used by the city to guide community development, was previously used on a strip of Ossington in 2009.

The result could be a contentious zoning bylaw like the one eventually put in place in Ossington, restricting new bars, cafes, restaurants, bakeries and takeout places to ground-level and of a size no more than 225 square metres.

But both residents and business are unsure how beneficial it will be in Parkdale.

The community in question here is unique: ethnically diverse, home to new immigrants and neighborhood stalwarts, with dramatic income-level disparities reflected in the storefronts along the Parkdale strip. Gleaming boutiques and hip coffee shops sit side-by-side with battered corner stores and thrift shops. Some storefronts are dusty and shuttered — which local business owners say is due to escalating rents in the increasingly desirable area, rather than the influx of nightlife destinations that Perks says is turning the area into a new Entertainment District.

The GO Lounge — a board-game café that is soon to be Parkdale’s answer to Bloor St.’s Snakes and Lattes — just squeaked in with its permit before the ban fell.

Relieved co-owners Samantha Lerner and Alisa Sadler say they were drawn to the area for the diversity of the demographic — from twenty-somethings to young families to seniors.

They are one of three businesses on the strip in the process applying for a liquor licence, hoping to join the 43 licensed establishments in the area. Although it will be both a day and night venue, Lerner says they feel they’re being tarred with the same brush as disruptive bars.

“The neighborhood is concerned about the changes that are happening, and rightly so,” she said. But it seems they are being caught up in a dispute Lerner says has more to do with the way liquor licences are issued than with small new cafés like theirs.

“You can have organic growth in the city, or you can fight it,” Sadler says.

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“I understand the motivations for the ban, and we’re losing control of developments in the area,” says John Silva, a long-time Parkdale resident and co-owner of Poor John’s Café. “But I don’t think it’ll accomplish what (they want it to).”

It could be “crippling” to small businesses just starting up, he adds. And as to whether it will encourage other new businesses to come in — “it’s naïve to think you can influence commerce that way.”