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Just before noon on Wednesday, not long before the doors opened, as they have on most days at this location since 1896, a crowd of young people huddled outside the Evergreen Street Mission on Yonge Street.

Next door, under the awning of Remington’s, an all-male strip club, two men passed a tall can of Colt 45 between them. They sat on the sidewalk not three metres from a sign from the City of Toronto. “Development Proposal,” it read, in big black text next to a picture of two tall condo towers joined at the base by a nine-storey platform.

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The owners of Evergreen, a Christian drop-in centre for homeless kids, sold their building to condo developers in 2013. On Tuesday, they announced a new, expanded home for the centre on Spadina Avenue. Remington’s, too, is on the way out, as are any number of small sex shops, strip clubs and payday loan joints up and down Yonge.

It’s all part of a gradual scrubbing of this last gritty stretch of Toronto’s longest street. For now, Yonge, between Dundas and College streets, remains a warren of modest retail, no-name food outlets and tattoo parlours that also sell bongs. But the signs of change are already here.