TORONTO -- Toronto's Cookbook Store is hard to miss: Sitting on the corner of Yonge Street and Yorkville Avenue, the store boasts a bright red sign that wraps around the building and storefront displays that have attracted food lovers for three decades.

But passersby's eyes were recently diverted from the iconic shop to a large banner draped down the side of the 1860s-era building, advertising a new condo development.

Store owner Josh Josephson and manager Alison Fryer confirmed the bookstore was being forced to relocate after condominium developers purchased the building.

Fryer, 53, said there won't be any "imminent" changes in the store and a timeline for the relocation has yet to be determined.

"We've had a great 30-year run in the Yonge and Bloor area," Fryer said. "We just wanted people to know what was happening once they saw the banner."

Bazis Condos, the company that purchased the building, has plans to erect a 58-storey tower known as the 1 Yorkville project, with construction starting as soon as late next year.

The story of the Cookbook Store's relocation is a familiar one. Now more than ever, independent shops are battling to stay open amid booming condo construction around the city.

The Cookbook Store's announcement comes on the heels of news that the storied Honest Ed's building in the Annex was sold to a Vancouver condo developer.

The transition from the traditional and iconic to the ultra modern and urban chic has been looming over the city for more than a decade, with growing demands for downtown living.

Fryer said she is not surprised.

"This is where the high density is, in these places (like Yorkville)," she said. "And we figured at some point our store would be turned into a condo."

Shaun Hildebrand of Urbanation Inc. -- a Toronto-based website that tracks condo development in the city -- says there are more than 3,000 units in Yorkville alone.

"The number of condominium apartments in the Yorkville area has doubled over the past 10 years to 33 projects," Hildebrand wrote in an email.

"The area is set to expand further with more than 2,200 units in 10 projects currently in active development, and nearly 4,000 units are in the planning stage."

The Bloor-Yorkville Business Improvement Association would not comment on the effect of condo development on small businesses in the neighbourhood.

Jamie McEwan, manager of midtown planning for the city of Toronto, said that opening up the concourse level of new condominium buildings, as well as creating a streetscape along Cumberland Avenue are just some of the ideas being considered to aid smaller businesses in Yorkville.

But these ideas still won't save the unique space housed by the Cookbook Store.

Besides being one of Toronto's biggest centres of culinary resources, the Cookbook Store is best known for hosting appearances by big-name cooks, from TV personalities Jamie Oliver and Anthony Bourdain to renowned chefs Julia Child and Elizabeth Baird. In 2011, the shop also became an established cooking studio.

"We've always tried to model it on a community atmosphere," Fryer says. "You can learn all you want about cooking and cookbooks, and also engage with not just staff but other people too."

While the Cookbook Store won't be a part of Yorkville's future, Fryer says she hopes condo developers will try to maintain the spirit the shop honed in the neighbourhood since the '80s.

"When the condos come in we're hoping they keep that community feel," she said.