Save Lula Lounge

Firstly, wed like to apologize for taking up your time with this issue. We all have better ways to spend our time than to deal with parking. However, we are faced with a potential situation that will seriously jeopardize Lula Lounges ability to continue to be a home for Torontos diverse communities, charities and musicians.

On September 30, City Council will vote on a series of proposals that, if passed, will dramatically alter the parking situation on Dundas St West by drastically reducing the amount of parking in the area 24 hours a day. Most of the spots that are marked for elimination are between Lansdowne and Gladstone. Of theexisting122 parking spaces in that area,only49would remain. The goal is move people through our area, not to it.

With an audience as diverse as our programming, Lula Lounge has become an important part of Torontos musical landscape.We are a meeting place for many cultures and have come to serve as a cultural centre for many newly arrived and established musicians. As part of our commitment to community building, we host many artist-initiated projects, high school diversity-oriented arts programs, family dance lessons and community meetings.

Since 2002 it has been our mandate to support and foster the growth of Toronto's musicians and to engage audiences from outside our immediate area.Our audience travel from all over Ontario, other provinces and the United States. We are very proud to have received a Celebrate Ontario grant in support of our 5th annual Lulaworld festival last May. The grantallowed us to further raise the calibre of our festival programming and to attract an estimated 850 tourists to our neighbourhood. We also actively work with Toronto Tourism, our city's destination marketing organization, to try to attract tourists to Toronto throughout the year.

The limited parking in the area is already a deterrent to many promoters, event planners and clients. Weve lost many potential events because of this lack of parking and are are worried that we will not be able to survive with significantly fewer spaces available. The effects of even less parking around our venue could prove catastrophic for many artists and community groups who depend on Lula as a place to present their work and raise funds for their projects.

We encourage our staff and clients to use TTC, bicycles and car pooling wherever possible.We are not advocates of a car-centered culture but we have to work within this current reality. As a community we feel that we are being unfairly targeted. The same parking reductions are not being proposed for College, Queen West or even on Dundas Street West east of Dovercourt. These isolated restrictions seem to be an unfair burden to place on a neighborhood that is beginning to flourish.

This petition is to ask our councillor Adam Giambrone and Toronto City Council to defer approving the proposed changes until a complete traffic study can be done for our area. That study should take into account the many factors that effect our rapidly changing neighbourhood and make recommendations that will balance the needs of TTC, drivers, bicyclists, pedestrians, residents and business owners. We believe that we can work together to find a solution that will allow this neighbourhood to continue to develop economically and artistically.