Thread by @g_meslin

1. A #KingStreetPilot mapping thread. Restaurant Row, in context.

This is downtown Toronto, west of the Financial District.

2. This is King Street West, roughly between Bathurst Street and Bay Street. The western end of the Pilot area.

3. This is ‘Restaurant Row’. Home to the most vocal #KingStreetPilot opponent. Ground zero for impolite ice sculptures.

4. The concentric circles are the 5-minute and 10-minute walking radii centred on Restaurant Row.

5. These are two major live theatre venues, the Royal Alex and the Princess of Wales. They have a combined capacity of 3,500 seats.

6. This is TIFF Lightbox. It offers year-round programming, and anchors the annual film festival, which includes a street closure.

7. This is Roy Thomson Hall, home to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, with a seating capacity of 2,630.

8. This is Metro Hall – 725,000 square feet of post-modern office space, housing more than 2,500 City staff.

9. This is the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. It hosts dozens of conventions/trade shows each year. 2016/17 attendance was 1.5 million.

10. This is the Rogers Centre. 500m south along John Street or Blue Jays Way. The Jays alone drew 3.2 million people to the venue last year.

11. A 10-minute walk east is King & Bay. The financial district. 200,000+ jobs. Business lunches. Expense accounts.

12. These are local hotels (locations and number of rooms). That's 1,500 guestrooms within a 5-minute walk of Restaurant Row.

13. If you go a little further, there are an additional 5,000+ hotel guestrooms within a 10-minute walk.

14. These are the airbnb listings within a 5-minute walk of Restaurant Row (as of June, 2017).

15. This is the area bounded by Bathurst, Queen, Simcoe, and Front. As of 2016, it had a population of 17,549. It continues to grow rapidly.

16. But what about parking?
Well, these are the Toronto Parking Authority street parking spaces in close proximity to Restaurant Row.

17. Worth noting that a #KingStreetPilot promotion means that those TPA street parking spots are currently offered free for two hours.

18. These are the parking garages/underground lots within 5 minutes of Restaurant Row. 4,000+ covered parking spaces within a couple blocks.

19. ...and these are the locations of surface parking lots near Restaurant Row. Another few hundred spaces nearby.

20. The point of all this is to consider the phenomenal locational advantages with which Restaurant Row is endowed…

21. An endowment that includes:
Tourist/visitor magnets.
Sidewalk traffic generators.
Hotels/airbnbs.
Local residents/jobs.
Tons of parking.

22. Before scaling back improvements to the city’s busiest surface transit line, the discussion should be about leveraging those endowments.

23. King businesses: these aren’t your friends.
Their ideas are toxic.
They didn’t care about you yesterday, and they won’t tomorrow.

24. These are vampires, feeding on manufactured division and outrage to extend their unnaturally long political lives.

25. These same opportunists coined ‘St. Clair Disaster’ in 2011/2012. Ask local businesses there about lasting brand damage.

26. Don’t give potential customers the finger.
Don’t tell people ‘King is Closed’.
Once out, you can’t put that genie back in the bottle.

27. King businesses: these ARE your friends.
Relentlessly positive.
Talking up your wares.
Bringing people out, not scaring them away.

28. Tell people that King is great.
That King is easy to get to.
That King is close to everything.
That King is open.

#KingStreetPilot