[PHOTO] Loblaws 60 Carlton, December 2012

The Maple Leaf Gardens, located at 60 Carlton Street just minutes' walk east of the College subway station and south of Church and Wellesley, is a national icon. Home for decades to the Toronto Maple Leafs, a decade after Toronto's NHL hockey team played its final game Canadian grocery chain Loblaws finally implemented its plans to convert the ground floor of the Gardens into a grocery store, Loblaws 60 Carlton. (Ryerson University uses the remainder of the space for its Mattamy Athletic Centre.)

Loblaws 60 Carlton consistently gets good reviews, receiving four stars on Yelp. There has been some concern in the neighbourhood about the impact of such a large store on the smaller stores of the neighbourhood--see Andrea Houston's Xtra! article published just before Loblaws 60 Carlton's opening in November 2011 and Tyrone Newhook's Xtra! article published one year later, both of which seem to report some impact, admittedly in economically harsh times. When I visited the store earlier this month with my father, I was again impressed not only by the store's size but by its excellent organization and displays. Nine pictures follow.