The Pepsi fridge was still glowing inside the former Cloud Nine Café on a recent afternoon, though not for long.

Behind the glass storefront on the Danforth bar, the site of three killings in three years, balloons and crumpled paper towels were tossed on the floor, hookahs and mugs dotted the shelves behind the bar and ripped vinyl couches were stacked in the middle of the room.

But hanging in the window was a sign of what’s to come: Blossoming Minds Learning Centre, a licensed daycare and music school.

When a former music teacher and registered early child educator spotted the building, near Danforth and Coxwell Aves., they didn’t see a string of homicides and neighbourhood complaints. They saw classrooms and a playground.

“We envision the building full of children who are learning through play, through their own inquiry, through music,” said co-owner Maggie Moser, a retired TDSB teacher.

It’s a “180-degree turn” from the former tenant, says local Councillor Mary Fragedakis.

“It’s pretty welcome news,” she said. “It solves a couple of problems.”

The café was a centre of sorts for a string of violent incidents over the past three years. Along a three-kilometre stretch of Danforth Ave. E., between Greenwood Ave. and Dawes Rd., at least 12 people were killed. Police have said the incidents are not related.

For neighbour Audrey Hinves, “anything is better than what was there.” She has lived just down the street for 68 years. One recent Sunday morning on her way to church, she was met with cop cars and yellow police tape.

Abdullah Farah, 20, had been shot dead in a drive-by outside the café. It was the final straw for many in the neighbourhood, prompting calls from locals to have the business shut down.

The next day, the landlord terminated the lease. The city has since revoked the business licence.

Moser said talks with the landlord had already started before the café was closed.

For Fragedakis, the daycare fulfils two goals: the growing need for affordable child care and ongoing revitalization of that strip of the Danforth.

“It will introduce a new dimension to the street that hasn’t been there before,” she said. “There will be more young families, lots of kids. It will be a different kind of energy.”

Moser, along with her business partner, Krista Dahlgren, hope to have shovels in the ground by July, starting a major renovation of the four units at 1530 Danforth Ave. that once housed a karate studio, the café, a sign shop and a pizza parlour into a five-classroom child-care centre with an 18,000-square-foot playground in the backyard. They aim to have space ready for about 90 children in full-time licensed care by the fall.

“We’re really excited to be taking this building and rejuvenating it and changing its use,” said Moser.

And so the neighbourhood’s concerns move from talk of murder rates and gun violence to another citywide concern.

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“It’s a real issue that there aren’t enough daycares in the city,” said Anne Roberts, pushing a stroller by the empty storefronts on a recent afternoon. “The more the merrier.”