Mark Garner has a neon dream.
The executive director of the Downtown/Yonge BIA believes the time is now for Toronto to immortalize iconic businesses of days gone by. So he’s collecting, restoring and replicating signs from classic city storefronts for a potential open-air museum.
But he needs help to turn the dream into a reality.
“Where are all the signs?” Garner asks aloud. “Why isn’t the cultural contribution that this signage made on anybody’s radar?”
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He has spent the last five years tracking them down and slowly generating interest in his project. Yonge St., Garner explains, was once “a rite of passage” and hot spot for neon lights.
Today, he thinks there’s a return of interest with the forthcoming Sam The Record Man reinstall at Ryerson University and the Honest Ed’s marquee finding a new home on Victoria St.
“Signage is en vogue right now.”
With Yonge/Dundas already a special area for signage, Garner said an outdoor museum would add to that status, to tourism and to a collective sense of where we’ve come from.
“So we’re going to form a committee to put a face and a name to this and really start driving it,” he said.
Garner imagines the sign museum to be outdoors and accessible to everyone. He has earmarked O’Keefe Lane as a prime location to make it real.
“There are many ways to do a museum,” he thinks, and laneways ought to be reimagined as part of the public realm. “This is an activation . . . it’s a natural fit.”
Skeptics can look to Edmonton or Las Vegas as examples done right. The Alberta Sign Association revitalized 104 Street, which began to flourish and eventually became an open market.
The Neon Museum of Nevada proved so popular, it announced its expansion in 2016.
Andrew Weird, the executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Tourism Toronto, thinks the concept is “a terrific idea.”
“This is exactly the kind of destination marketing that is unique to the place and can be seen nowhere else,” he said. “The idea is very valuable and I think these signs could serve two purposes: they are visual icons of the city that we could use to help market the city.”
Garner said his team has been working with the folks in Edmonton to see how they did it. Slowly, people are hearing about the project and coming to him, too. So far, he’s collected a “mish mash of things” including the Papaya Hut, Music World and parts of Sam The Record Man.
He’s also got his sights set on collecting signs from businesses should they go under or decide to renovate, like HMV or The Steak Pit.
“We’ve started collecting and will continue until the community gets behind this,” he said. The Brothers Markle, who were responsible for creating many of the original neons, have indicated their interest to replicate signs that cannot be found but are fondly remembered.
That would include Sam the Chinese Food Man that used to be on Yonge St.
The Sign Association of Canada has also been supportive of the idea, said Garner.
Once the BIA gets its committee together, they’ll be looking for seed funding to refurbish these signs and secure a location for them.
They are hoping to raise money from individuals and businesses, heritage and tourism grants, the city, province and federal government funds as a non-profit organization, although they are still in the early stages.
However it happens, Garner says he knows the clock is ticking.
“Toronto is about to become a very tall city, very quickly and we want to designate this cultural corridor before developers come after it and all our cultural spaces are gone,” he said. This is heritage preservation.
“We can’t forget our past,” he said. “We still have to tell that story.”
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