Little India in an awkward phase

Oh, I don’t know. Certainly the street looked like a depressing slum and something needed to be done… but was this it? Bright paint is cheap enough and spraying is the easiest way to lay it on, especially if you don’t mind a bit of overspray onto the sidewalks. The graphics don’t appear to be finished, so maybe they’ll improve.
As a backdrop for a gaudy jumble of retail clutter, the spray job will probably look about right. What’s missing right now is the bustle of real business activity. The street suffers under an ugly snarl of overhead wires, transformers and old utility poles. It’s never going to be pretty, so it may as well go for “interesting”.

Restaurants seem to have good prospects along here and Gerrard Street supports more than its share of jewellry stores. South Asian textiles… clothing and interior decorations are doing OK, too. Stores selling kitchen wares from that part of the world are viable and at least three stores do good business selling spices, Asian produce and imported packaged and canned goods.
There’s opportunity for non-Asian type businesses to score here, too. A coffee place caters to “buggy mommies” who converge during the day for lattés. Next door, a new toy store caters to their children. Home Hardware has sold its necessaries to locals for years and doubled its size a few years ago.

There’s potential in Little India, but at the moment there’s more retail space to rent than there are desperate, hopeful, hustling merchants to put it to work. Let’s hope they crowd in, draw lots of customers and create a nifty, funky, thriving market area.