I kept looking for the Ferris wheel among the images of sparkling condo towers and yacht clubs that planner Eric Kuhne presented to members of the city’s Executive Committee yesterday on behalf of the Toronto Port Lands Company.
Peeking around the crowd of TV cameras and reporters, who seemed determined to prevent the public from actually seeing the slide show, I finally found it. There it stood, poking into the sky at the west end of the Keating Channel, where the Don River empties into Toronto Bay and not at Cherry Beach, where earlier versions of the plan promised it would be.
As Councillor Doug Ford hinted over the past week, the Ferris wheel, “a retail-leisure town centre destination”—definitely not a “shopping mall,” Kuhne insisted—and a monorail all appeared in the new proposal for the Toronto port lands.
Those involved in the plans did not consult with councillor Paula Fletcher, in whose ward the port lands lie, nor did it ask city council for the authority to hire planners and architects to flesh out its ideas. Currently, developing the lands is not even in its mandate—that’s the responsibility of another agency, Waterfront Toronto. Nevertheless, it apparently had hired Kuhne to draw up the plans about three months ago.
Highlights include:
+ More land for developers to build high-rise residential, retail and office structures, meaning more money for the city.
+ An “ice palace”—uh, arena—in the Hearn power plant.
+ Parkland stretching southward from Lake Shore Boulevard to Lake Ontario. The park would serve as a flood plain for an overflowing Don River during a severe weather event.
+ A monorail linking the area with the Distillery District and Union Station.
+ An “emerald necklace”—a ring of green space connecting current and future parks throughout the area and along the water’s edge.
+ Central business area with stores catering to high-end shoppers.
+ A “creation and innovation centre,” as in an area of low-rent office space to encourage business start-ups and artists to develop their products and crafts.
+ More marinas.
While the designs for the area are drawing most of the public and media attention, they obscure a big procedural issue, one the city may have difficulty surmounting. Ford’s plan proposes that the city take control of all the land south of Lake Shore Boulevard between the harbour and Leslie Street. It would then transfer responsibility for the job of transforming these former industrial lands from Waterfront Toronto to the Toronto Port Lands Company.
Only ten years ago, the city joined with the federal and provincial governments to create Waterfront Toronto, because politicians and citizens felt the Toronto Economic Development Corporation—ironically, that’s the same group we now know as the Port Lands Company—wasn’t moving fast enough on the harbour job. Instead, the three governments formally charged the new organization with the task of revitalizing these 800 waterfront hectares into a livable mixture of residential, business, recreational and green space. It’s the same organization responsible for the upcoming West Don Lands and East Bayfront residential projects, and for next year’s revamping of Queen’s Quay.
The pace of Waterfront Toronto’s consultation process, involving both the public and funding partners, and negotiating with land-owners before proceeding, clearly frustrates Mayor Ford. Ford told his executive that the city and port corporation could build the new plan in five to ten years. “I don’t want to wait for 25 years,” he said, referring to Waterfront Toronto’s scheme to build incrementally over a long period of time.
Fletcher and councillors Davis, Vaughan, Matlow, McMahon, Mihevc, Wong-Tam, and Carroll, who are not members of the committee, questioned yesterday’s deputants and generally spoke out against the proposals. The Kuhne presentation contained some good ideas, a conciliatory Fletcher said, but the city needs to consider many more ideas before it agrees to proceed. Other speakers, including the city’s former chief planner, Paul Bedford, urged the committee not to abandon years of public input and staff time by removing Waterfront Toronto from the file.
A chief stumbling block for planning the port lands has been the issue of what to do about the Don River and its potential for flooding. Some members of the public criticized the city for apparently blocking the province from approving an environmental assessment plan to naturalize the river mouth. That scheme would have redirected the flow of the river along a more natural, meandering course before it poured into the lake. The new river mouth would prevent the Keating Channel from silting up and flooding nearby land, but it would also reduce the amount of prime territory available to develop.
Waterfront Toronto says it was waiting for the provincial go-ahead before it could come up with its own business plan for developing the precinct. City council—including 11 of the current 13 councillors on the Executive Committee—unanimously approved naturalizing the river mouth just one year ago in July, 2010. Nevertheless, all 13 members of the current executive backtracked on that by also approving that the city renegotiating its funding agreements with the senior levels of government to seize the port lands.
The full city council will consider the executive committee’s recommendations at its next meeting on September 21. Expect that Ferris wheel to figure prominently. Whenever Toronto politicians get together to talk about competing visions for the waterfront it turns out to be a carnival.
