For Ginelle Skerritt, the Golden Mile was “the place to be” when she was growing up in Scarborough in the 1970s.

“It was home to the biggest movie theatre in the area,” says Skerritt, who remembers the excitement of going to the Golden Mile Cinema on her 9th birthday and standing in a block-long lineup that stretched along Eglinton Ave. E. from Victoria Park to Pharmacy.

“Whenever I hear the words Golden Mile, I think about that time. It is such a happy memory for me.”

The Eglinton strip from Victoria Park Ave. to Birchmount Rd. is not such a happy place anymore.

The once bustling avenue — heralded in the 1950s as the heart of Canada’s first industrial park, made possible by the purchase of former federal munitions properties by then-Scarborough reeve Oliver Crockford — is now a sea of parking lots, car dealerships and big box retail outlets.

Construction equipment and concrete barriers that clog Eglinton as part of the Crosstown transit project only add to the general unsightliness of the area.

But Skerritt sees the possibilities.

On Tuesday, BMO Financial Group and United Way Greater Toronto are launching a new initiative that will see the leaders of some of Canada’s biggest corporations invest their time, money and expertise to ensure the revitalization of Scarborough’s storied Golden Mile puts area residents in the driver’s seat.

And Skerritt, in her role as executive director of the Warden Woods Community Centre, is among a handful of local community leaders who have been invited to help make it happen.

“Certainly in all my years, I’ve never been invited to a table like this,” Skerritt said of a meeting in October co-chaired by BMO chief executive officer Darryl White and United Way Greater Toronto president Daniele Zanotti.

“We normally don’t get to have a chance to sit down with the corporate community and have a chance to think about what it means to create a destination or a place that is going to have a meaningful impact on people’s lives — before it happens,” she added.

White is equally excited about the potential.

“I’m not aware of a circumstance in Toronto — or anywhere — where the most senior people sit and devote real time, effort and resources alongside the most senior people in the community,” he said in an interview.

The city of Toronto, which is currently creating new planning rules and guidelines for the Golden Mile area to accompany the Eglinton Crosstown project, has been consulting with residents, community groups and area landowners for almost two years.

But that often adversarial process misses the voices of the most vulnerable and never includes company CEOs, said Emily Caldwell, the senior planner working on the Golden Mile Secondary Plan.

“Most of our interactions are with the landowner who is proposing something, concerned neighbours and community agencies, and with city staff and agencies,” Caldwell said.

“There is only so much we can do within city planning,” she said. “This initiative is looking at it through a very different lens.”

There are currently nine redevelopment proposals for the area, including the Eglinton Square and Golden Mile shopping centres, representing more than 22,000 rental and condo units. Ultimately, the city envisions 24,000 housing units, 19,500 jobs and upwards of 43,000 residents living in the community over the next 25 years.

“So a lot is at stake,” Caldwell said.

“I’m hopeful that (the BMO-United Way) process will lead to better conversations so that everybody can contribute to the complete community that we are seeking to achieve in the Golden Mile. Because right now, it’s really not happening,” she added.

The Inclusive Local Economic Opportunity (ILEO) project was hatched a year ago after BMO donated $10 million to look at new ways of approaching economic development in Toronto neighbourhoods research shows are increasingly becoming segregated islands of wealth and poverty.

The corporate-community partnership model is one the bank is hoping to leverage in other neighbourhoods, including in Chicago, where it has also pledged $10 million to the United Way, White said.

Toronto corporate leaders chose the Golden Mile to pilot the concept because transit expansion, new city planning rules and rezoning applications mean the area is ripe for change and there is still time to shape what happens.

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

“The growth we are seeing in the Greater Golden Mile neighbourhood makes it a perfect choice for a program that will help address issues around economic disparity,” said Mayor John Tory who attended several meetings of the corporate leaders.

“I am hopeful that the results of this innovative and collaborative initiative will help us in future planning, economic development and social infrastructure across the city,” he added.

Too often when areas undergo physical and economic revitalization, low-income residents and local business owners become displaced because they can no longer afford to remain in the neighbourhood, the United Way’s Zanotti said.

Or they are psychologically shut out as new and often more expensive amenities and services replace the establishments that welcomed and served them in the past, he added.

“The ILEO project is about making sure that greater Golden Mile residents share in the benefits of new economic opportunities, and can be a part of the change resulting from the area’s rising prosperity,” Zanotti said. If successful, ILEO leaders hope the model can be replicated across the city, he added.

RioCan, a member of the corporate leadership table that owns a number of big box retail outlets in the area and has a rezoning application to build some 3,000 residential units on a 10-hectare site near Eglinton and Warden Ave., is launching a small business catalyzer, to kick-start the initiative.

In partnership with PwC Canada and other members of the corporate table, RioCan will work with local residents with good ideas who wouldn’t otherwise be able to start a small business. They will offer free business, accounting and legal advice, low- or rent-free space and ongoing support, said RioCan president and chief operating officer Jonathan Gitlin.

“When a business is formed in a community from local residents and draws shoppers and customers from that community who see the outcome of a homegrown entity, then it spurs pride and hope for others in that community,” he said in an interview.

The goal is to have three new businesses created by next spring with more to come in following years, Gitlin said.

Other local economic development ideas are also underway, including a community-owned infrastructure joint venture, led by Aecon, to provide construction and maintenance workers for the Eglinton Crosstown LRT.

“Greater shared prosperity requires deeply co-ordinated efforts between the public and private sectors,” White said. “Our pilot projects in the greater Golden Mile represent our first on-the-ground steps.”

As head of the non-profit Toronto Community Benefits Network, Rosemarie Powell has been negotiating agreements with developers to ensure at-risk youth and local residents are trained and hired to work on public infrastructure projects like the Eglinton Crosstown.

In most cases, Powell says local communities are forced to insert themselves after planning is well underway and contracts have been already been signed.

But the ILEO approach is new.

“This is exciting and unprecedented,” said Powell, who is also a member of the leadership table.

“Residents get to participate early on before any development gets decided,” she said. “They get to put forward their vision of what type of development should happen. Right down to the design. This looks like a true partnership.”

According to the United Way, the area is 65 per cent visible minority and 59 per cent immigrant. About 60 per cent of residents have a college or university education. And yet more than 40 per cent are employed in relatively low-paid retail, sales and service jobs. More than 60 per cent say they either lack Canadian work experience or don’t have the necessary education or skills to get a job.

At the Victoria Park Hub, which opened in 2010 in a former pool hall on the site of the original Golden Mile Plaza on the northeast corner of Victoria Park and Eglinton, Marcie Ponte also raved about the ILEO initiative.

“We are actually moving forward in a way that most of us who do community development work have always dreamed of,” said Ponte, executive director of Working Women Community Centre, which provides settlement services and is the lead agency at the Hub.

The Hub, a community meeting place, which provides a wide range of services including parenting support, skills training and abuse counselling, is hoping to find new, affordable space in the redevelopment, Ponte said.

“A table with BMO? $10 million? United Way partnership? This could lead to all kinds of possibilities,” she mused. “It’s a real gift to a neighbourhood like this.”