Roni Brown is standing in her store, MDA Interiors on Kingston Road in Scarborough, surrounded by vintage furniture and chandeliers.

Bright light from an open back door illuminates the honey wood floors in the store, which is part of a red-brick plaza on the north side of the street.

Brown says business is good, but she thinks it’s only a matter of time before she’ll have to give up the space she rents with co-owner Steve Flegg. A string of stores down the street are already shuttered, placeholders for a new condo development.

“I think if they carry on, Toronto will have no charm left,” Brown says. “It’s going to be a city of boxes.”

This stretch of Kingston Rd., east of Victoria Park Avenue in the Birchcliffe-Cliffside neighbourhood, is definitely in the midst of a transformation.

Two condos are under construction, there are sales offices for more and a handful of new buildings have already been completed.

The city has another development application for an 11-storey building, with 180 residential units, on Kingston Road just east of Birchmount Avenue.

Businesses are slowly moving in too, although Kingston Road is often viewed as more of a highway than a high street.

Caroline Pius, a former Sears buyer, opened Luxe, her home decor store near Warden Ave., a year ago.

“I thought it was an up and coming area with all the condos coming,” Pius says.

The city is also trying to help businesses start up a BIA, which the area hasn’t had for years.

“We’re definitely seeing a lot of change now and over the next four years I think you’ll see a drastic change along Kingston Road and the Birchcliffe area,” says Gary Crawford, who represents the neighbourhood as the city councillor for Scarborough Southwest.

Ten years ago, most developers wouldn’t have looked at Kingston Road east of Victoria Park Avenue, Crawford says.

“It was just the old stigma of Scarborough,” he reasons, “but as the city was building out and up, more into the suburbs, (developers) ventured into Scarborough and realized that the market conditions were such that they were very favourable for them to build.”

Most of the development is taking place on the four-lane stretch of Kingston Road, from Victoria Park Avenue to Birchmount Road. The area east of Birchmount Road to Midland Avenue, which opens up to six lanes of traffic, still has thriving strip malls on the north and south side of the street, although there is one new condo building on that stretch.

The councillor moved into the area from the Beaches with his family a couple of decades ago. Crawford says he wanted a wider lot that had a driveway.

“You have a good mixture of new people moving in, but you still have a lot of original owners who have been in their home for 40 or 50 years,” Crawford says. “There are generations of families living here. People move here and stay,” he says. “And their kids, whether they move away, they end up coming back and settling down in those communities.”

And the area still draws residents to it.

The Birchcliffe-Cliffside neighbourhood had the fifth highest number of house sales in 2018, out of 140 total neighbourhoods in the city, according to data provided by zolo.ca. Of the 220 sales, 200 were for detached homes.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

There is still more change to come in the neighbourhood, but it will be off the main drag.

The city is moving forward with plans to redevelop former quarry lands on a large parcel of land to the northeast of Gerrard Street and Victoria Park Avenue, which was sold years ago to a private developer.

A controversial plan to build a big box store there — among the proposed midrise and townhomes — has been nixed in favour of more residential units, Crawford says. A redesign is expected to be announced at a community meeting sometime this fall.