After the Toronto Gay Village community was put on guard the long-standing venue Crews & Tangos and two other businesses may be under threat of closure, the Church Wellesley Village Business Improvement Area (BIA) says the show will go on, at least for now.

Change is years away.

The concern started with a Feb. 28 Facebook post from the Church Wellesley Neighbourhood Association that said real estate developer Graywood Group has undertaken preliminary consultations ahead of a proposal to develop a stretch of Church Street that contains Crews & Tangos, Boutique Bar and a Target Park parking lot. The result could mean a move or closure of the businesses in favour of “a mix of uses, including retail and residential.”

The response by some was outright panic. A potential loss of Crews & Tangos was called “very unfortunate,” “a huge bummer,” and “a slap in the face.” It would be a blow to the drag community who say the venue is one of the most profitable places to perform, and to the gay community as a whole who consider the venue to be “a beacon of the Village.”

“It’s the first bar you see when you look (the Village) up online,” local drag performer Allysin Chaynes said. “There is a lot of traffic from tourists, a lot of the first-timers. Crews attracts a lot of those people. It is totally saddening to think of that not being there for those people.”

But it seems initial fears may be for naught, or at the very least, premature. Graywood Group has said there are no concrete plans at the moment, while Christopher Hudspeth, chair of BIA, says he “can comfortably say Crews would be OK for at least two years, if not more.”

“As much as development appears to happen very quickly in the city of Toronto, there is a process,” said Hudspeth. “We’ve seen other developments in the area. These typically take five or six years. There are some that have been in process as much as 10 years.”

But the idea of new development in the heart of the Gay Village, and the possibility of a venue like Crews & Tangos closing, has stirred deeper fears.

“How long is it until they try and take Woody’s, how long is it until they try and take Glad Day?” Jo Primeau, a local drag performer, asks. “I’ve heard there are people who don’t want Pride. They think it’s too loud. … The more condos, the more people who don’t want gay, don’t want music, don’t want there to be a Gay Village.”

As gentrification seeps into neighbourhoods and some history and sense of identity are sacrificed, could the Gay Village become a thing of the past?

The question may not be unfounded.

Handfuls of long-standing neighbourhood businesses — bars and clubs like Zipperz, Fly, Zelda’s, Slack Alice and The Barn — have closed in the last decade and, as local performers point out, the businesses that replaced them weren’t able to stay open for long.

In one example, the bar that replaced Church on Church, a venue two doors down from Crews & Tangos, closed eight months after it opened.

Harry Singh, owner of the now shuttered Zipperz and Blyss Nightclub, says businesses can be simply priced out. The rental prices are “astronomical” and landlords are “taken advantage of by developers” who have more money and an interest in condo and big-store development, not businesses that represent what the community is about.

In recent years developments have closed in on the neighbourhood from all directions and some new residents have proven unfriendly. Business owners say noise and traffic complaints abound, dulling the throbbing entertainment life the neighbourhood is known for.

Too many complaints could lead to more closures and problems getting licenses.

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City officials do not share the concern and stress there would be balance between growth in the Gay Village and community identity.

Coun. Kristyn Wong-Tam (Toronto Centre) says she thinks it’s important for the community to recognize the Village was never going to remain exactly the same as the city builds and changes around it, and to focus on how it can change for the better.

“I think what’s important is we have to do everything we can to ensure that this intensification is going to be carefully guided through detailed planning contexts that actually helps retain the special character of this neighbourhood,” she said.

Should any redevelopment on the Crews & Tangos stretch happen, Hudspeth said the community would also be consulted every step of the way and there would be much to consider. A redevelopment may also mean “more lifestyle development, including nightlife space but also potential restaurant space and other things.”

Mayor John Tory takes the same position.

“Thank goodness we have a very robust consultation process that involves people. There’s an approval process, so people don’t just get to put up a building anywhere they want,” he said Thursday. “I am optimistic that process will produce something that is broadly acceptable to the community but … you can do it in a way that doesn’t sweep away the past and preserves the best part of the past including intimacy that comes from our very special Village and retail- type areas.”

Many in the Gay Village are not so comfortable. Change is not necessarily wanted. They are in fight mode.

Chaynes has started a Change.org petition to protect Crews & Tangos from closure. There were over 18,500 signatures just 48-hours after it was created.

Xtacy Love, another drag performer, has been working to build connections with stakeholders and wants the Gay Village to be recognized as a Heritage Conservation District, protecting not just one building but the cultural heritage, structure and landscape of the neighbourhood as a whole. Cabbagetown, Riverdale and Fort York are examples of neighbourhoods recognized as such.

“We need to make as much noise as possible,” she says. “It would protect Church Street from Carlton (Street) to Isabella (Street), to protect the integrity of the designated space. It would not just protect the facades of the building. It would protect what is inside them.”

BIA officials, now awaiting information on next steps from Graywood Group, say they feel a recent council motion to protect independently-owned and operated LGBTQ2S+ small businesses and cultural space would also offer some protection.

“We recognize that the Village will continue to evolve but what’s really important, I think, is that we actually do everything we can to protect these businesses,” Wong-Tam said. Before being elected to council, she owned Timothy’s World Coffee on Church Street at Maitland Street from 2000 to 2007.

In the meantime, it seems Crews & Tangos is safe.

Michael Ramawad, owner and managing director, took the stage and addressed the Monday night drag show crowd to alleviate concerns. He said a two-year lease was signed for the space and said that “immediate panic, though alluring, is not really necessary.”

With files from Francine Kopun