On a recent rainy Sunday afternoon, Sidonio Da Silva sat on a bench in the middle of Galleria Mall and chatted with another man.

“We come here to talk about life . . . food,” the 75-year-old said with a laugh, clutching a bamboo cane and wearing a white flat cap.

Da Silva mostly visits the Galleria, as he calls it, on Sundays. But he’d caught wind of the fate of the mall at Dupont and Dufferin Sts., which was discussed the day before at an open house called “Reimagine Galleria.”

Placards depicting renderings of a development that could replace the 1970s-era mall were installed in a neon-lit hallway between two fitness centres.

They showed four triangular buildings boasting more than 2,000 units, wedged into half of the 12-acre land. The other half, separated by a diagonal road connecting Dupont and Dufferin Sts., would be a park and a new community centre.

Freed Developments and Elad Canada bought the property for $71 million from Harzuz Holdings Limited and Ontario Potato Distributing Inc. in August. Since then, their message has been that they’re consulting with the community before submitting plans to the city in the fall. “It’s too early right now to even anticipate the scope of the project,” spokesperson Danny Roth said, when asked what it might cost.

“We’re kind of turning the process upside down,” said Joe Svec, the project’s development director. The group is aiming to submit plans to the city in the fall after the consultations. Svec says the opposite is usually true.

That community feedback may be crucial to the success of the current redevelopment. Past plans for the site have not turned out well.

Diana Black says she was at a similar open house in the 1980s and police had to shut it down. A mixed-use development had been planned for the site in 1981.

In 2004, a previous owner, Harzuz and Ontario Potato Distributing Inc., had the property rezoned for six residential buildings and 38,000 square-feet of retail space.

Feedback in the form of colourful Post-it notes dotted the boards at the open house. The worries reflected a neighbourhood in the midst of and — at the same time — bracing itself for the kind of fast-paced change Toronto has seen over the past decade.

“Don’t become a Liberty Village; you’re better than that,” one note said. That was 11-year resident Dallas Bergen’s first thought when he heard of the project. Next to it, he posted his own: “Yes! More green; more art; more community,” he wrote below it.

“People are really concerned about maintaining the identity of the existing community and then finding out how to smoothly integrate all these new residents,” he said.

Increased traffic, large shadows and whether the space would be mixed-used and not only for people who can shop at “cheese boutiques” were part of the questions answered by Svec during the day.

Luis Ceriz picked up on the example Svec gave, listing the types of independent businesses the developers were hoping to attract.

“The boutique shops that are being built, they only attract a certain type of retail,” Ceriz said. “It’s not really going to serve the 70-year-old couple that has been here since 1968, you know.”

He also doubted his family’s main use for the mall — T.Dot Tumblers, a gymnastics centre — would find affordable space amid the possible high-rises. His wife, Donna, hoped the proposed new community centre would fill the void, though.

She said she was optimistic about the increased amount of green space.

Between questions, Svec had imparted the developers’ vision of a “porous” space that people could access via foot, bike and car, and attractive retailers that could serve the same purpose as those most frequented in the mall, such as the grocery and drugstores.

But the fragmentation would render hangout spots, like the one where Da Silva spends his Sundays, useless in the winter.

“Seven months in the year, it’s cold,” said Momtaj Islam, who’s owned La Tunic, a clothing store, in the mall for 15 years. Islam pointed to Stockyards, an outdoor mall northwest of Galleria, saying she doesn’t believe many frequent it because of its open concept.

Plus, she said of the community that’s formed around Galleria, “they need this place.”

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Store owners like Islam also expressed concern about their place in the new development. She says, at her age, she doesn’t have the heart to open a store in the new buildings, so the development will send her into an early retirement.

George Dark, a partner at Urban Strategies, a firm working on the project, acknowledged “it’s a big project; it’s something that’ll make a big change to the community.”

The renderings didn’t reveal possible heights for the buildings, but they could be up to 26 storeys, Dark said.

The consultation was a suggestion from councillor Ana Bailão. “It could be great or it could be bad,” she says. “I think everybody is cautiously optimistic.”

Da Silva remembers when it was built in 1972. He didn’t visit the mall then, but does now that he’s retired.

“We don’t have nothing more than this space,” he said.

Renderings

At a recent open house about the redevelopment of the Galleria Mall, residents were shown a set of images of what the site could look like, an almost futuristic setting of triangular buildings.

Developers Freed and Elad Canada held an open house over the winter at the Galleria Mall, as suggested by city councillor Ana Bailão, and collected community feedback. Project development director Joe Svec said citizens left more than 300 Post-its with their comments. The results are these “highly conceptual” renderings, Svec says, as plans are not finalized.

Though the developers haven’t submitted plans, George Dark, a partner at Urban Strategies, a firm helping design the project, says they’re aiming for there to be more than 2,000 units with about four buildings that could reach as high as 26 storeys—that’s seven storeys higher than what the land is zoned for right now.

The developers will also be applying for the property to be rezoned. They want to include as much retail space as the Galleria Mall has (225,000 square feet). They’re also proposing to build a new community centre and a road cutting through the property. Residents at the open house feared the intersections of that new road would clog Dupont and Dufferin Sts.

The new road would give way to the park, which gives an added feeling of safety, Dark said. Wallace Emerson park now lies behind the shopping centre. Between the two, lies a parking lot with more than 500 spaces.

The developers want to do away with the parking lot and put most, if not all, parking spots underground. Their aim is to make the site accessible by foot, bike and car, though they haven’t specified how city infrastructure will be able to support the influx of residents into the neighbourhood.

On top of the open houses, a “community working group” was formed to ensure residents’ interests were taken into account of the plans for the 12-acre property that could bring significant change to the area.