neighbours

Julie Mitchell discusses what makes a great neighbourhood. She is the owner of Parcel Design & Torq. Aside from what makes a great neighbourhood she discusses how she chose Leslieville as a place for her family & business before Leslieville was cool. What to look for a selecting a great neighbourhood. Why Leslieville is great? Why its important to support small business owners in your are.   Transcript Davelle:              Welcome to The Morrison Report. I wanted to create a podcast that would give people insights into the Toronto real estate market. You can follow me on Twitter at Davelle Morrison and on Instagram as Davelle Morrison, and you can like my business page on Facebook. On today’s episode we have Julie Mitchell who is the founder of Parcel Design, an integrative, creative firm of strategists, designers and storytellers. Parcel Design has recently been on Chatelaine and PROFIT Magazine’s Top 100 list, and Parcel has been named one of the top 500 fastest growing companies in Canada. Recently, Julie delved into the world of fitness by opening up a spinning studio called Torq in Leslieville. Julie was one of the first people I know who moved to Leslieville. So Julie, I really wanted to ask you- What was it that originally brought you to Leslieville? Julie:                    Well, I moved into what is probably not considered Leslieville proper, but I moved onto DeGrassi Street way back in 1995. Shortly after finishing school I was renting and thought it would be interesting to get into the housing market so I proposed to my mother that we purchase a house together that had separate living arrangements, of course. So at the time, my mother was living in Europe and she gave me three conditions to purchase a home. One was that we absolutely had to be north of Gerrard, it needed to be detached, and we must have parking. And of course there was nothing that fit that description in our price range so I ended up finding this fantastic house on DeGrassi, and this was pre-internet so I had to mail my mother photos and I went ahead and purchased the home and told her that she would love it, which she did. So she lived abroad for a few years and I rented her portion of the house and continued there for 15 years. So from the house on DeGrassi we ended up moving just down the street to a house that’s basically at Queen and Carlaw and we just happened to walk by, saw this great house, it was detached, it did have parking, and it just suited us more. So we moved into that house six years ago and that house is right in the heart of Leslieville. Davelle:              Amazing. So your house on DeGrassi, if you don’t mind telling our listeners- How much did you pay for that back in 1995? Julie:                    $229,000 Davelle:              Wow. And so what made you think that that was going to be a hip, cool, happening place to live? What was attractive to you back then? Julie:                    I would say I really didn’t know at that time. What I liked was that it felt pretty close to downtown, so about as close to downtown as we could be, really without being in Cabbagetown. So I grew up in the East End; I wasn’t as familiar- I grew up more around Danforth and Jones area, so I really had no idea that it would be the neighborhood that it’s come to be. In fact in the early years there was nothing on Queen Street. Everything that we did was on the Danforth. And now I never go to the Danforth; it feels like a tourist town and it’s just not an area that we spend any time. So I’d say that that transition to feeling like it had its own neighborhood, that it had its own kind of lifestyle in Leslieville- I would say that really started to happen around 2005 and there were some great little restaurants that opened way back. Anyone who’s been here for awhile would remember Barrio and then of course some of the staples like Bonjour Brioche have been around us and Joy Bistro have been around forever, but Barrio was one of the first businesses/restaurants that really put Leslieville on the map. Davelle:              Cool. That’s awesome. And then you decided to buy a building for your business there. Again, why did you decide to locate close to home and in that same neighborhood? Julie:                    I figured out a long time ago that I didn’t want to spend any time in my car so I really just did not want to commute. Had the real estate bug pretty early from this initial purchase back when I was 25 and there was a vacant building that I used to pass by en route to the Mayfair Club and it had been for sale for quite awhile, and one day I thought, “You know what? I’m going to go take a look at that building.” So that was in 2006 so ended up buying that building. It was pretty crazy-looking. A lot of people looked at it but no one really wanted to buy it because it just required so much work but I love a good renovation project so decided that that would be a good home for Parcel. Before moving into that space we were located in the Corktown neighborhood. I purchased a little row house on Queen Street near River and Parcel was there for about two years but we outgrew it pretty quickly. So the building was a side investment but it ended up being a fantastic location for our business and certainly the value of the property that we’re in now has gone up about four times what it was when we originally purchased. Davelle:              Wow, that’s amazing. That really is. And it’s great that you saw the potential and fixed it up. Did you have