A historic Etobicoke factory has been restored to its original Art Deco glory, but locals are disappointed the redevelopment didn’t include a residential component, at a time when affordable housing is one of the city’s biggest challenges.
While the squat, brick Campbell Soup factory building at 60 Birmingham St. was preserved by developers, it is no longer a local production facility sourcing farms in Niagara. It’s now a distribution centre, the last-mile link for companies operating globally.
The factory, pictured in 2018, closed that same year. The recent redevelopment preserved and restored the building’s Art Deco façade, which had been partially enclosed and had its windows bricked up since the 1980s.
A City of Toronto Archive photo showing the construction of the Campbell’s Soup factory circa 1931. It was designed by Toronto-based architects Alvan Mathers and Eric Haldenby, who also designed buildings for the University of Toronto, among other Canadian postsecondary institutions.
Zsuzsanna Lichner, one of the locals who lobbied for a different use for the site, acknowledges QuadReal, the developer, got the restoration right. “The design of Quadreal is as good as it can be, if you must place a large-scale distribution facility into a residential neighbourhood,” she said.