IanMunroe.ca

It’s well after the morning caffeine rush on Queen Street West, but Dark Horse Espresso Bar is buzzing with fashion-forward customers. The music flits from punk to hip-hop to indie rock as a barista in leopard-print tights doles out $3 coffees.

The café seems to fit seamlessly into the neighbourhood’s trendy aesthetic. Yet a year ago this space was a magnet for controversy. Residents had learned that a family-run produce shop that occupied the storefront for 16 years was closing because the previous landlord opted to sell.

Adding fuel to the fire, the property, which includes an adjoining building, had been purchased by one of Queen West’s most prolific real-estate players.

“I’m not a developer, I’m a rejuvenator,” Jonathan Hyman said by phone from his Yorkville office. “If there’s an opportunity to change the street front I’ll do it.”

At age 46, Hyman has already acquired at least 27 buildings along the two-kilometre stretch between Augusta Ave. and the Gladstone Hotel. Most are clustered just east of Trinity Bellwoods Park. He has at least 20 more properties, each registered to one of five companies. But West Queen West is his main focus.

Hyman’s investment in the area has led to speculation that a neighbourhood known for its independent boutique shops could soon host gleaming new condominiums and suburban-style big box stores.

“It’s about centralization of ownership to a certain extent,” said John Spencer, a local resident who spearheaded the backlash against the closure of Square Fruit Market. “There has to be a mechanism in place to make sure the community’s needs are maintained over time.”

One of Spencer’s neighbours, John Willis, formed a loose-knit residents group last year in the hopes of giving people who live in the neighbourhood a greater say in how it’s evolving.

“We all accept that change is a part of life —we’re not super conservative about it,” said Willis, who lives a few doors up from Dark Horse café. “The thing that does concern us is simplification of the ecosystem, where you get all of one type of thing.”

Hyman believes that his desire “to live a private life” has helped spur opposition to his investment. Google his name and you’ll get very few hits. But in two rare interviews in recent weeks, he shared a few meagre details about his life.

He was raised in downtown Toronto, where he still lives. In his spare time, Hyman collects abstract art, travels widely and plays team sports such as hockey and basketball. He wouldn’t disclose whether he represents a group of investors or his own financial interests exclusively, but said that real estate has become his full-time job since he got into the business 24 years ago.

When it comes to West Queen West, Hyman sees himself as nourishing Toronto’s NoHo, the upscale Manhattan neighbourhood sandwiched between Greenwich Village and the East Village that’s filled with historic buildings and one-off boutiques. And he handpicks his tenants with that view in mind, guided by hunches “from within” about which businesses will add to the area’s “vibe.”

Doc Von Lichtenberg, the silver-bearded chair of the West Queen West Business Improvement Area, said Hyman brings in “good neighbours.” Sitting in a Starbucks that Von Lichtenberg points out was a goth bar until the millennium, he said there are a number of buildings between Trinity Bellwoods Park and Dufferin St. that could use Hyman’s magic touch.

“We’re certainly not Yorkville, but 20 years ago this was a pretty shitty neighbourhood,” Von Lichtenberg said. “Cities crumble, fall apart and become desolate parking lots full of dollar stores because independent, creative people like Hyman stop investing.”

The Toronto Institute For The Enjoyment Of Music across the street is one of Hyman’s more recent projects. He repaired the building in 2009 and took a chance on a novice businessman, Howard Goldbach, who wanted to start a music school downtown.

“He made it possible because, looking back on it, I had nothing going as an entrepreneur,” said Goldbach, who hires professional musicians as instructors and hosts live concerts in his storefront. “It’s not your regular everyday music store,” he said.

To allay fears that he’s interested in condo developments, Hyman says he has spent more than $300,000 restoring and renovating the building that houses Dark Horse café and Sydney’s, an upscale men’s clothing shop next door.

Jason Hackworth, an urban planning professor at the University of Toronto, said that Hyman’s business approach “bucks the trends that are happening in this city and in others as well.”

Gentrification tends to happen organically, with individual buyers fixing up single buildings that haven’t been touched in years, Hackworth said. Or else big-time property owners buy up city blocks and eventually put up a high rise. Hyman doesn’t seem to fall into either category.

But Hyman said that he’s not unique. Look closely at other desirable neighbourhoods in the city like Yorkville, he said, and you’ll find businessmen like him who control dozens of properties.

http://toronto.openfile.ca/toronto/file/2011/06/meet-king-west-queen-west