There’s a knot of roads in Etobicoke where Kipling, Dundas, and Bloor collide into a kind of arterial noodle called Six Points. The tangle of concrete overpasses would make Robert Moses proud, but with nineteen acres of prime City-owned land languishing—most evidently as the site of the long-derelict Westwood Theatre—it seems the time has come to finally mop up this spaghetti incident.

“We have a green light for redevelopment,” says local councillor Peter Milczyn (Ward 5, Etobicoke–Lakeshore). Turns out back on August 17, Etobicoke York Community Council changed zoning regulations to allow for new anchor occupants: courts. Think “of law,” not “of recreation.” “The City sold four acres to the province,” says Milczyn. “We got a very good deal: $13 million for the land.” The province will also build an underground parking lot as part of the sale.

But that’s just four acres of what today is largely shrubs, overgrowth, cement, wasteland vistas, a patch of land that acts as a dirty snow dump, and the Toronto Police Service's 22 Division.

Don’t get your hopes up: the Westwood Theatre’s fate is sealed. It will become dust this summer after spending the last thirteen years in post-closure purgatory. “It’s costing us money to maintain an empty property,” explains Milczyn. So, it’s first to go—before residents even know precisely what else is coming.

Still, the Westwood is a nostalgia-instilling relic of mid twentieth-century suburbia once touted as the first location to offer "Floating Screens." "They were a gimmick," explains Eric Veillette, a journalist and the cinephile behind silenttoronto.com. “They had a curved look that gave the impression of three dimensions"—without actually delivering the third dimension.

Veillette sends along a flyer from the Westwood’s opening night on February 28, 1952. The invite paints a picture of a luxurious cinema (with rubber foam seats!), parking for five hundred, and the latest in picture and sound. Then–Ontario premier Leslie Frost was one attendee. “Everybody who grew up with Etobicoke from a certain age—that was the theatre to go to,” acknowledges Milczyn. “I went to a lot of Disney movies there.”

But the Westwood had to deal with the reality of competition from “giant coliseums,” according to Veillette, like the nearby Queensway and Sherway cinemas. “Most theatres that closed in the '90s could trace their fate to those.”

The big question remaining is what will happen to the rest of the nineteen acres that aren’t becoming courts. Based on charrette work conducted over the last five years, residents have expressed a strong desire for a cultural destination, a park, pedestrian and cyclist infrastructure, and a grocery store (one across the street was torn down and replaced by housing). “We’ve been talking to the YMCA for years. The city and the community both want to see that there. That would still leave eight to nine acres,” says Milczyn.

Some will become parkland, some will become retail. Looking around the vacant lot you can’t miss the twenty-first century condo reality, though. Tridel towers have shot up next to Kipling, and former Michael Power High School lands also send a tower-full message. And more might find their way to Westwood: the lands allow for high-rise condos.

Milczyn admits there may be some condo element, but is adamant that the land will be mixed-use. “We want a balance and a vibrant node of activity,” he says, pointing back to the sale to the province as evidence that institutions are taking a role where it might be easier to just sell to the highest developer bidding.

The Westwood land project itself is just one part of the West District Design Initiative—a plan to redevelop lands at Bloor and Islington (around the TTC station), and Etobicoke Civic Centre up at Burnhamthorpe and West Mall, and results won’t be clearly seen at least until road work around Six Points begins in 2013.

And while the Westwood Theatre is definitely becoming rubble, it might have a life after death.

“I’d love to have that sign up there,” says Veillette, noting the tattered sign was damaged during the filming of Resident Evil: Apocalypse. “There’s little more than nostalgia now,” he says, “assuming it’s not going to be the Westwood Cinema Courthouse.”

Well, that might actually happen. Says Milczyn: “[The sign] might be documented and recreated. I’d be happy to encourage any redevelopment to retain the name.”