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Liberty Village • King West • King West Central • Entertainment District • St. Lawrence Market Area • Queen Richmond East

3BANZAI! TEAMRETHINKS SUSHI Touchscreen menus and digital artcreate high tech Peter Street dining

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Cool Space at Publicis

Find a Fitness Club

Hernando’s Mexi-Cali Mix

PLUS: Brack Electronics, TorontoOperas, Totum Tips and Incoming

MobiliaFurniture

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The Canadian Opera Companycontinues its 2004/05 season atthe Hummingbird Centre for

the Performing Arts with perhaps theworld’s most famous opera, Puccini’s La Bohème. Puccini’s glorious music sets the stage for this quintessential taleof young love and heartbreaking loss. La Bohème runs intermittently withWagner’s Siegfried, part of the largestwork in the history of Western music.

Second part of “the Everest of opera”

Siegfried is the second installment inthe Canadian Opera Company’s (COC)journey to presenting Wagner’s completeand monumental Ring Cycle in thecompany’s new home, the Four SeasonsCentre for the Performing Arts in 2006.

Described as “the Everest of opera,”Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen

(The Ring of the Nibelung) is thelargest work in the history of Westernmusic.

Siegfried runs January 27, 30 (2 p.m.),February 2, 5, 8 and 11, 2005. With the exception of the January 30 matinee,all performances begin at 6:30 p.m.Siegfried is sung in German withEnglish SURTITLESTM.

“Classic tale of heartbreak”sold out in 2000

La Bohème is set in the raucous streetsof Paris’ Latin Quarter in the 1830s, and it is a celebration of the strength offriendship and the power of love.

La Bohème runs at the HummingbirdCentre, January 23 at 2 p.m., 26 at

7:30 p.m., 29 at 7:30 p.m.,February 1 at 7:30 p.m.,

4 at 7:30 p.m., 6 at 2 p.m., 10 at 7:30 p.m.

and 12 at 7:30 p.m. La Bohème is sung in Italian withEnglish SURTITLESTM.

www.coc.ca

2 Community Chronicle • Winter 2005

Brack Electronics Under Sound New Management

Siegfried and La Bohème Start this Winter’s Operas at the Hummingbird

With music and movies commanding more of our time and money, it’s

hardly surprising to find high end homeentertainment boutiques such as BrackElectronics carving a niche for themselvesas the best place to learn about gettingthe most out of your media.

Oakville Audio, also specialists in the field since 1988, and offering similar products to Brack, has recentlycompleted the purchase of Brack’s assetsto effect a form of merger. OakvilleAudio president Christian Royes says his company brings complementaryexpertise to the Brack store located at 44 Wellington Street East.

40 Years in ServiceBrack has catered to Toronto

music lovers for almost four decadesand its three-level Wellington StreetEast store features six differentrooms, some wired for home theatreand others for sound, but all areloaded with quality components.And it’s this attention to high endthat makes the merger a good fit,says Royes.

“We have similar business models,” he explains, “and whatwe’re bringing to this merger is a focus on home automation andcustom installation.”

www.oakvilleaudio.com

Photo: Michael Cooper

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Community Chronicle • Winter 2005

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Nikolai Miljevic doesn’t thinksushi is exotic anymore. He’s probably right, given

its place as a quick, downtown lunchstaple. So why maintain the illusionof an ancient, far-away place whenserving this Japanese standard? Whynot just open a restaurant that lookslike a restaurant in contemporaryJapan?

“In other words,” he explains, “nobamboo, no false traditional décor tomake the place look like somethingpeople think a Japanese restaurantshould look like.”

Miljevic, along with business partner Vincent Ventura, has openedBanzai!, a shiny day-glo example of modern Japanese dining that draws on themes of sophistication,technology and play to create a high tech dining experience.

The neo-contemporary look of the space blends wood tones with a60s palate of white and bright orangeto create a cool, clean and well-litlunch space for fast mid-day diningat the front and a cozy wood-clad

booth space (inspired by originalTatami booths) in the back for largergroups and longer meals.

LED Bar DisplayDesigned by Toronto’s Precipice

Studios, the space’s highlights includea 100-foot long mural “tattoo” bylocal artist Duro the Third and anLED wall display behind the barwhose clear liquid jars glow alternatelyred, green, blue or yellow.

A plasma screen in the middle ofthe restaurant features digital artpieces, courtesy of an arrangementwith Pixel Gallery, giving the space a steady influx of new visuals toentertain patrons.

Touchscreen EntertainmentAnd if you see anything you like,

you can access the art collection viatouchscreen menus on the peripheryand booth tables (there is a total of 16 screens throughout the restaurant),which also allow customers to scrollthrough the menu, learn about sushi(chopstick etiquette is one topic), and text message with other tables.

Importing the talents of ChefShinichiro Aoyama, Banzai’s menumixes much loved Japanese and western ingredients to create disheslike Maple Tamari Tuna, WasabiWings and Avocado Twist.

Flagship RestaurantMiljevic and Ventura are both

veterans of the restaurant and night-club industries, originally in Montrealand later in Toronto (Miljevic openedHotel at King Street West and PeterStreet and has been here for fiveyears), and began thinking about asushi venue two years ago.

They started with the notion ofbringing a large Japanese or Britishsushi chain to Toronto, but after sixmonths of negotiations, says Miljevic,the terms were not agreeable.

“We decided to start our ownchain and this is the flagship,” hesays, explaining that future Banzai!restaurants won’t necessarily look like this one, but that this is wherethe brand is being established.

www.banzaisushi.ca

BANZAI! UPDATES JAPANESERESTAURANT CONCEPT

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While Verity’s focus is on community and on building an environment where women can relax with a number of spa services, fitness figures prominently in the businessclub’s list of strengths. And as the only downtown clubwith a pool, Verity is showing its commitment to fitness in no uncertain terms.

“When word got out that we had a pool, we had a number of people applying to be Aquafit instructors,” says Verity’s director of fitness Catherine Parkinson. Shesenses the Aquafit program, which involves using thewater’s resistance to run and exercise, will become a popular activity at the Queen-Richmond club.

Still, with one of Canada’s top Pilates instructors,Sagrario Castilla (known as the grandmother of Pilates in Canada) offering her expertise to members, Verityendeavours to develop expertise in more than just aquatics.

The club’s poolside studios provide a calm space toindulge in some new programs such as Yoga in the Deep Winter, a six-week program designed to rejuvenateand revitalize.

Located at 111 Queen Street East, Verity’s spa amenitiesinclude massages, facials and aromatherapy, and as a business centre, the club can accommodate off-site meetings and catered events.

Diesel Fitness has fast built for itself a reputation asToronto’s go-to gym for yoga. Not surprisingly, co-ownerJosh Feuer attributes much of this success to the high caliber of the instructors.

“A yoga program is usually an afterthought at a lot ofgyms,” he says, “but we built a lot of our business around itand our instructors are as good as in any studio in the city.”

He cites the popularity of Diesel’s unlimited yoga andPilates plans - where patrons pay a fixed monthly or yearlyrate - as another factor contributing to the success of thefacility’s fitness courses.

With some 200 classes per month, Diesel teaches everything from spin, Pilates, dance and kickboxing to several types of yoga and has added boxing conditioning to the roster (four new heavy bags were installed this pastfall, the result of Diesel being used as a movie set for theupcoming Farrelly brothers comedy, Fever Pitch).

Given its commitment to yoga, Diesel has developed anew form of the ancient exercise called Heavy Metal Yoga,which incorporates the use of freeweights into the postures.

“So you’re building muscles as well as flexibility,”explains Feuer.

Other updates to the club include a new clothing boutique called Suite 99 that features exclusive fitness wear labels, and an expanded lunchtime menu thanks to an arrangement with Fusaro’s (just up the street on Spadina).

FINDING FITNESS... FROM EAST TO WEST

Diesel Fitness • 99 Spadina Ave.www.dieselfitness.ca

Verity • 111 Queen Street East www.verity.ca

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T O T U M T I P S5 STEPS TO GET YOUR NEW YEAR’S FITNESS RESOLUTION BACK ON TRACKBy Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, M.Sc. and Men’sFitness Training Adviser

Already putting off your promise to keep fit through to 2006? If you’ve fallen off the fitness wagon, here are a few tips to getyou back on track. After all, winter will soon be over (honestly!)and you’ll be ready to hit the beach. And you want to be readyfor that, don’t you? Here are my five simple steps to help youlose fat and get lean.

1. Find a source of social support. It can be a friend, spouse orco-worker, but research from Stanford University shows theideal social support is a professional that you feel obligatedto report to on a consistent basis.

2. Eat six small, balanced snacks and meals per day,rather than two or three large meals.

3. Commit to eating whole, natural foods such as fruits,vegetables, and lean protein sources, rather than processed foods like muffins, fast food, and sugary snacks.(Try www.fitday.com to monitor your food intake.)

4. If you want to lose fat, start by reducing your caloric intake by 200 calories per day. One easy way to do this isto replace sweetened beverages with water or Green Tea.

5. To get lean, you’ll need to include some form of strengthtraining and cardiovascular training. If you haven’t workedout in years, start conservatively and get professional adviceon how to structure your workouts in the safest and mostefficient and effective manner possible.

The good news is that you don’t have to spendhour after hour in thegym to get great results.A good program shouldhave you in and out of the gym (showerincluded) in only an hour.Pretty small investmentfor such a great return, isn’t it?

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One of the largest personal training company in metroToronto, Totum Life Science has some 80 fitness and healthcare professionals in its employ and has garnered a muchdeserved reputation as the place to connect with highly educated fitness experts.

Working individually with trainers, clients range frombeginners just starting out on an exercise program, to elite and professional athletes looking for more advanced programtechniques. Despite the one-on-one relationship with theirtrainers, Totum clients still have access to an entire team of experts.

“If something comes up that I don’t have expertise in,” says Irvine, who holds a Masters in Science and is a personaltrainer himself, “I either connect the client with anothermember of our team or get that information for you.”

Unlike many other fitness facilities where trainers work asfreelancers in a gym, Totum’s staff operates like a medical clinic using the in-house expertise to solve fitness problems.

The King Street West facility employs four chiropractors(three of which are also personal trainers), 45 personal trainers,12 rehabilitation practitioners, as well as a number of classinstructors, Pilates teachers (two of which are instructor train-ers), and world-class Thai boxing champion, Clifton Brown.

Other in-house experts include Totum co-owner Dr. StaceyIrvine, a chiropractor and strength and conditioning expert,who has worked as a sessional lecturer and research assistant at U of T and the University of Saskatchewan and has madeseveral television appearances imparting fitness advice.

Totum Life Science • 445 King Street Westwww.totum.ca

Community Chronicle • Winter 2005

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Front Street Furniture Retailer Mobilia: Sofa, So Good.

Community Chronicle • Winter 2005

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Think of 700 square feet of open condo space that must be a dining room,lounge, bedroom and breakfast nook. Anything that goes there has to performmore than one function and a lot of Mobilia furniture does double duty.

Maybe it’s the black-and-whiteHolstein-patterned Corbusierlounge chair in the window,

or maybe it’s just the location, butthere’s something about Mobilia’s Front Street East store that exudes a hip confidence.

It could also be the fact that behindthat pane of glass lies a 20,000-square-foot showroom, one of the largestdowntown furniture stores, that isloaded with a bold selection of European-styled contemporary furniture concepts.

Despite its expansive showroom, this is one of the smallest of Mobilia’s17 stores (a typical company retail spaceweighs in at 40,000 square feet) but sizeisn’t the only difference between this St. Lawrence Market area store and thecompany’s other locations throughoutthe country.

Urban ClienteleSome pieces are sold only here

because it serves an urban clientele – a lot of condo dwellers. So red leathersofas and industrially-inspired tablelamps have a home here more than inMobilia’s suburban stores. For the mostpart, though, the company’s showroomsall stock essentially the same product.

Mobilia prides itself on matchinghigh-end, contemporary furniture with modest prices, and thanks to thecompany’s buying power, prices areindeed competitive.

Functional FurnitureIf one had to choose a theme for

Mobilia’s collection, it would have to beadaptability. Think of 700 square feet ofopen condo space that must be a diningroom, lounge, bedroom and breakfastnook. Anything that goes there has toperform more than one function and alot of Mobilia furniture does double duty.

Tables hide leaf inserts, armchairshide single beds, coffee tables convert tobackgammon boards and there’s even aquick change sofa, the Chameleon,whose moveable back cushions andarmrests allow it to be reconfigured inany number of ways.

Italian Leather LeaderThough a Canadian company,

Mobilia has its roots in Germany wherefounder Hans Kau was born. In 1959,this airline employee was posted toCanada and found his new countrylacked the stylish furniture of his homeland. Kau began importing itemsfor himself and, on occasion, selling tofriends. He soon found enough of ademand to open a small boutique abovea grocery store in Montreal.

Today, Mobilia is the largest inde-pendent retailer of Italian leather upholstery in eastern Canada. And thisquiet, comfortable Front Street Eastspace, lit brightly by banks of halogenlights and made warm with an earthypalette of beige broadloom and brownexposed ceiling, stands as a stylish backdrop for a large collection of thecompany’s innovative furnishings.

www.mobilia.ca

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7Community Chronicle • Winter 2005

Connecting with your client’sclient is the essential goal ofany advertising firm. Publicis

calls this street-smart thinking, and tothis end, the international advertisinggiant has kept offices above a retailconcept space it has owned on Paris’Champs Elyssées since 1958.

Connecting in TorontoDespite a merger in 2002 that

positioned Publicis as the fifth largestcommunications group in the world(18,000 employees and 130 officesthroughout the globe), it is apparentfrom its Toronto location strategythat it is never too big to stay connected to the local consumer. It’s a strength Publicis has leveragedfor such clients as CIBC, HewlettPackard, allStream, Kia, Nestle,Priszm Brands (Taco Bell and KFC)and Hitachi.

Lindsey Ash, director of adminis-tration for Publicis’ Toronto office in the Queen-Richmond Centre says things can change on an almosthourly basis in the communicationsindustry and that having street smarts helps to read the trends.

“In order to do our best work withour clients, we need to know whotheir customers are and what strategywill best reach them. And to do that,we need to know what’s happening

on the street. All of that revolvesaround being involved with the cityand not being in a sealed buildingwhere your only information comesfrom a news outlet,” says Ash.

A Brick and Beam CultureTaking 48,000 square feet of space

at 111 Queen Street East just overfour years ago was indeed a questionstaking out its own space in the city.In 1999, Publicis had decided toopen a Toronto branch and hired 55 people to start the business. (A mostly administrative officeremains in Montreal.)

In less than a year, the team hadlanded Microsoft Canada and CIBCas clients, two wins that would drive the growing agency out of itsSherbourne Avenue and Bloor StreetEast diggs to unfinished brick andbeam space at 111 Queen Street East.

“We looked at some bank towers,”recalls Ash, “but it didn’t fit our

culture. It’s not how we saw ourselvesin five years.”

Publicis Toronto’s general manager,Andrew Bruce liked the street-smartattitude of the new location, slightlyoff the beaten path but close enoughto Bay Street, and work began on theopen concept space.

Clubhouse and DeckSpanning the second and third

floors of the Queen RichmondCentre, Publicis’s offices have anadministrative area with clusters ofworkspaces (ten-by-ten-foot workareas for everyone from the presidentto assistants), some 15 different meetings rooms of various sizes, alarge boardroom, a separate creativedepartment (adjustable lighting anddouble workstations for teaming), the“clubhouse” (a cafeteria/casual workspace) and a 2,000-square-foot deck.

Well known in the European marketplace, the Publicis logo’s lionhead is likely to gain prominence asthe firm nurtures its brand awarenessby hosting a number of client partiesand even offering its space to clientsfor use as an off-site retreat. The exterior is also scheduled to go towork for the agency as the RichmondStreet fascia will soon bear thePublicis letters and logo.

www.publicis.ca

QUEEN-RICHMOND CENTRE ENHANCESADVERTISING FIRM’S STREET CRED

Above: The Clubhouse is a casual meetingplace that doubles as an event room.Right: The open concept gives everyone,including the president and GM a cubicle.Upper right: The suspended stairwellhangs by a single steel stringer. Far Right: Publicis‚ lion head logo.

“We looked at some banktowers,” recalls Ash, “but itdidn’t fit our culture. It’snot how we saw ourselves in five years.”

Lindsey Ash, Publicis

Community Chronicle • Winter 20058

With festive yellow lightsstrung casually about itsspace, paper mache Gekkos

clinging to the wall behind the bar,Agave cacti cut-outs and Dos Equis ontap, there’s little mistaking Hernando’sHideaway for anything but aMexican restaurant. Still,owner Helen Mark says whatmost people commonly referto as Mexican food is actuallyTex Mex. And Hernando’s, sheexplains, is California-Mex.

“We do more sauces and we don’t do the rib and steakthing,” says Mark of the differ-ence between the two styles.She says the sauces also tend to be fresher and that theemphasis here is on Enchilladas,Quesadillas and Nachos, ratherthan heavy meat dishes.

Some Tasty Favourites“People love our Fajitas and our

Guacamole is really tasty,” says Markpointing out a few of the WellingtonStreet East dining room’s customerfavourites. In fact, she says the

vegetarian fare has a particularly goodreputation adding that, “most peopledon’t know they’re eating veg.”

It’s often communal snack fare thatgets ordered here as patrons pile inbefore or after a show at CanStage and the Hummingbird Centre. “And ifhockey ever starts up again, we’ll get abit of the ACC crowds,” says Mark.

Cheese Covered NachosNachos, while always a pub crowd

pleaser, have the distinction here of being evenly covered in cheese. Not piled high with dry ones in themiddle, says Mark.

As we scan the menu, Mark confessesthat although there are a number ofpopular foods, one of Hernando’s great strengths is its Margueritas.

www.hernandoshideaway.com

www.alliedpropertiesreit.com

The Community Chronicle is published four times a year by:

Allied Properties REIT469 King Street WestFourth FloorToronto, ON M5V 1K4

Editor: Yvan Marstonyvan@gravitydesigninc.com

Design/Layout: Gravity Design Inc.scott@gravitydesigninc.com

Festive California-Mex Fare at St. Lawrence area Hernando’s Hideaway

IncomingRed Bull Establishes a Downtown Presence

"We felt that this area matches up with Red Bull,"says Jim Bailey, the drink’s

Canadian vice president ofmarketing, discussing theFebruary move to KingWest Central. With space in Vancouver, the 5,300square feet it will occupyat 445 King Street Westis its second office inCanada. It is also currentlylooking for office space in Montreal.

www.redbull.com

Kids Publisher Plans Summer Move to King West Central

For nearly half a century ScholasticCanada has introduced

young people to the joys of reading, taught youngminds about Canada and the world and run its operations from Markham. But the latter is about to change as Scholastic moves into 602-604 KingStreet West this summer. Taking up some 3,500 sq.feet will be Scholastic Canada‚s marketing, salesand editorial departments, leaving the administrativeand warehousing functions in the 905.

“We wanted to be closer to the city. That’s where a lot of marketing, publishing and editorialoffices are located. We wanted to be closer to thatcommunity,” says Scholastic Canada co-presidentIole Lucchese, explaining that 90% of the staff relocating to King West already live in the city.

www.scholastic.ca