Anticipation for the Leona Drive Project, where six modest Willowdale bungalows backing onto a ravine are leaving this mortal coil with the help of 20 avant-garde installations, effectively ends a quarter-century of skepticism surrounding salesman Mayor Mel Lastman’s concept of a lucrative Downtown North York. “It’s just amazing to me that anybody would think of doing some kind of art project down there,” 50-year neighbourhood resident Gwen Franklin told the Toronto Star. See what happens when the most scintillating nearby option for a night on the town is Jersey Boys? Suddenly, the inner suburbs are recognized for having stories, even though that’s what psychogeographer Shawn Micallef has been saying all along. Nine Leona Drive even gets its backstory told on the exhibition website: mindblowing to consider the space’s evolution from being part of a 1787 purchase by Lord Dorchester to a sale earlier this year to monster builder Hyatt Homes. Deena Pantalone, a member of the developer firm family last seen lying to Toronto Life about the origins of her dress, played a pivotal role in letting the dwellings transform for the next week. Friday night’s opening will have a shuttle bus from the Gladstone Hotel in order for suburban refugees to make nosebleed jokes. Quick, before the last examples standing of those post-WWII Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation builds are embedded in Douglas Coupland’s clock tower at the Shops on Don Mills.

The Leona Drive Project [official site]