Central Waterfront : Development News

With two-way traffic on Queens Quay finally opened this week, the downtown section of Waterfront Toronto’s pet project is about to be unveiled.
 
The ground broke on the revitalization of Queens Quay back in 2012, creating a mess of construction and detours along the waterfront for the last couple of summers. But the dust is about to clear to reveal new streetcar tracks and relocated roadways, as well as new bike lanes and snazzy pedestrian walkways. On June 19, the city will celebrate the official reopening of the stretch of Queens Quay between Bay Street and Spadina Avenue.
 
“We did a site walk with one of the [stakeholder] committees last week and it was overwhelming positive, people are excited about getting this street opened up and seeing this vision materialize,” says Mira Shenker, communications manager at Waterfront Toronto.
 
A few small fixes won’t be complete until after the Pan/Parapan Am Games. Toronto Hydro still has to install power cables into underground ducts. Until then, about 20 of the new 56 signature streetlights on Queens Quay will be temporarily replaced by aluminum poles and overhead powerlines, and six event power stations for the use by the Waterfront Business Improvement Area for events will be temporarily covered with boxes. Additional trees will get planted when Toronto Hydro is finished its work.
 
There’s even more good news for cyclists. The Martin Goodman Trail from Yo-Yo Ma’s Toronto Music Garden to Stadium Road, where cyclists can continue onto the existing trail through Coronation Park, will be open by the end of June.

Going east from Bay Street, Shenker says the Martin Goodman Trail along Queens Quay to Parliament should be open by early July, connecting to the existing trail that continues eastward.
 
“We just want to make sure that all the work at all the intersections is complete before we open the trail to traffic,” she says. “We’re addressing the lack of signage and potentially even fencing to indicate that the MGT is closed (for safety reasons) between Lower Sherbourne and Parliament until then.”
 
Writer: Paul Gallant
Source: Mira Shenker

The ridiculously tight space between the Westin Harbour Castle, Lake Ontario and the Harbour Square complex was a key inspiration for the winning design for the Jack Layton Ferry Terminal and Harbour Square Park. Chosen last week from five finalists, the proposal from KPMB Architects, Netherlands-based West 8 and Greenberg Consultants solves the space constraints by creating a park whose hills rise to become a green roof for the terminal itself. The plan puts one use quite literally on top of the other.
 
“It’s a flat area and this elevation is very significant. Being able to get higher changes your perspective completely,” says Ken Greenberg of Greenberg Consultants. “You can imagine people picnicking on those hillsides, and having kids sliding down them in the winter. It will be something special and different on the waterfront."
 
Anyone who’s been to the Toronto Islands knows just how uninspiring the current ferry terminal is. “All the charm of a large public washroom,” says Greenberg. The winning design would provide better views, more green space and, within the terminal itself, a grand wooden ceiling that would better protect people from the elements. The rolling hills also faintly echo other new-generation parks along the waterfront, like HTO and Sugar Beach.
 
What happens next? While the city tries to rustle up the funds to pay for the redevelopment project, the winning team will enter a period of study with the stakeholders to work out the details and technical issues. For example, what will the new ferry docks look like and where will they go? Greenberg figures that could take a year. When construction does start, the port needs to remain open, which makes it a particularly tricky redevelopment.   
 
Writer: Paul Gallant
Source: Ken Greenberg

Have you ever thought of working in a food court?

John White at WZMH Architects thinks you should, and suggests if you haven't, you may already be behind the curve.

“One of the interesting things that we found in designing Waterpark Place is that the food courts are taking on a new identity,” he says, referring to the 30-storey RBC-branded building just south of Queens Quay that officially opened in December. It's the southernmost point in the underground PATH system, and also features a 627-seat food court, designed by WZMH.

White says that RBC, along with other large firms such as Deloitte, have started operating their offices using something called hotelling. The idea is that instead of having your own office, cubicle or desk, you reserve one, per your needs, each morning, whatever you need to keep at the office relegated to an assigned drawer.

“It is no longer a fixed-seat concept,” White says. “The food court is becoming the fixed seat.”

But even without hotelling, and the office downsizing that's prompted it -- seeing per-worker office space reduced from an average of 150 square feet, according to White, down to 100 – you might already have noticed the shift. That is, serious people interviewing other serious people for serious jobs in public, and professionals meeting in surroundings that afford a good deal less formality – and possibly even more security – than is possible in an office.

To cater to this, WZMH has designed its Waterpark food court with three themes.

“Lounge seating has a living room feel,” he says, “like the high-end waiting area of an office. Business casual has tables scattered around that can be collected into boardroom-sized surface. Urban is more communal table seating.”

They've also incorporated two skylights to provide the sort of atmosphere conducive to long-term sitting.

According to White, the food court vendors are onside with the new dynamic, figuring what they lose in turnover, they gain in larger groups.

White sees this conscious food court design as the beginning of an inevitable trend that will involve the entire PATH system realizing that it's no longer catering to an office-bound, or even 9-5 world.

“More than transitory spaces you move through,” he says, “these are spaces you will inhabit.”

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: John White
 

If you live in Toronto and have spent any time at all around the waterfront, you will almost certainly have been asked by a tourist at least once to direct them to the ferry terminal. Unless you already know where it is, is can be difficult to find from the street.

That is, no doubt, one of the issues that is being tackled by the entrants for the design competition, run by Waterfront Toronto, to comprehensively redesign not only the ferry terminal, but the 4.6 hectares of public space surrounding it on both sides, from the east side of Yonge Slip to the east side of York Slip, which includes the area around the Westin Harbour Castle and Harbour Square Park.

“The intent is that the designers have an opportunity to think of the space holistically in order to come up with a vision for that area,” says Waterfront spokeswoman Samantha Gileno, “and then we can look at creating a master plan so we can start prioritizing and funding the revitalization for the area.”

The first phase of the competition, the Request for Quotation (RFQ) closed on Friday, and Waterfront expects to release a shortlist of up to five by the end of the month. There will be a public consultation in the form of an exhibit of the proposals in March. The exhibit will also go online to ensure as much public participation as possible. Taking public opinion into effect, a jury will then select one design, at which point funding and timelines will be set.

“Sugar Beach came from the Jarvis Slip competition,” Gileno says, “and the mouth of the Don was also a design competition. Until the competitions were held, we couldn’t envision what might come out of it. You get so many great, innovative ideas flowing through these competitions.”

The ferry terminal, which was renamed after Jack Layton in August, 2013, is the city’s chief entryway to the Toronto islands.

“I think we all agree that this is a really important waterfront gateway, a site that in some ways isn't as accessible, prominent and beautiful as it deserves to be,” Gileno says. “I think it’s just time we rethink this.”

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Samantha Gileno

 

It's hard to tell which is more impressive: That the Billy Bishop Airport tunnel just won project of the year from the Tunnelling Association of Canada, or that there’s such a thing as the Tunnelling Association of Canada.

Last week, the concrete was poured to create the floor of the tunnel’s mainland pavilion, and this week, the first of two water mains that have been built into the tunnel will be hooked up.

It’s the final stage of the project begun in 2012, to create a six-minute pedestrian connection to Billy Bishop Airport, Canada’s ninth busiest. Beginning in a few months, passengers and employees will be able to use an elevator to descend 30 metres to subterranean moving sidewalks that will take them under the bit of water known as the Western Gap at a speed of 2.3km an hour so they no longer have to wait for the ironically named Marilyn Bell ferry to transport them across one of Lake Ontario’s shortest spans.

“Right from the start, the Toronto Port Authority has worked to ensure that this tunnel was designed and constructed in a manner that puts the traveller experience first,” said Ken Lundy, the city’s director of infrastructure, planning and environment in a prepared statement. “Building a tunnel of this scale and complexity while maintaining efficient operation of a busy airport is no easy feat, but we were up to the challenge and are proud to have the project recognized by the Tunnelling Association of Canada.”

The tunnel will open as soon as those moving sidewalks and elevators are installed, and the final landscaping is completed.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Ken Lundy

The city's Waterfront now officially has the fastest Internet service in the city.

Waterfront Toronto and Beanfield jointly announced that the infrastructure is now in place for buildings both residential and commercial to take advantage of speeds of up to 500 megabits per second, more than 40 per cent faster than the top speeds currently offered by Rogers and Bell.

“It’s partly an economic development tool that we use,” says Andrew Hilton, who heads communications for Waterfront Toronto. “One of the roles that we have at Waterfront Toronto is to help strengthen the economy of the city of Toronto. The communities we’re building and will build will be far more appealing to people, whether it’s for personal use, or people who work from home. And for commercial use, we’re looking at trying to find ways to attract growth-oriented business on the waterfront.”

These speeds will not be automatic, however. Developers and landlords will have to subscribe to the service for it to be offered in buildings. Some businesses — such as cafes — may offer these speeds to the public, others may not.

The price, to be included in condo fees for condo owners, will be $60 a month. For 350 megabits per second, Rogers is currently charging $226 a month; Bell charges $90 for 175 megabits per second.

In practical terms, 500 megabits per second is roughly equivalent to 60 megabytes per second. Beanfield's service is symmetrical, meaning the speed applies to both downloads and uploads.

For some perspective, however, two Internet service providers in Vancouver are offering double that speed, 1 gigabit per second, as is Google in certain parts of the U.S.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Andrew Hilton

Some of the more interesting employment opportunities we've spotted this week include:

Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation, a non-profit devoted to preserving Ontario's Greenbelt, an area surrounding the Golden Horseshoe, is hiring a research and policy analyst. As the title suggests, the role involves significant amounts of research, though there's a major outreach component as well. Specific requirements include presenting one's finding to interested parties and engaging with a variety of government and non-government organizations.

The SickKids Foundation has two new openings this week.

First, they're seeking an associate graphic designer. The position requires three to five years of experience in digital marketing or communications, and will see that the person that takes on this position help the non-profit with its fundraising initiatives on behalf of Sick Kids Hospital.

Second, the foundation is seeking to hire an associate events director. The role has a significant emphasis on building and mentoring a team, as well as building new and existing events. This position requires five to seven years in a related leadership role.

On the culture side, Canada's National Ballet School is hiring a digital media co-ordinator. The role involves creating audiovisual material that will help with the school's promotional, marketing and educational needs. Three-plus years of related media experience is a requirement for this position, as well as expertise with programs such as Sony Vegas and DVD Architect.

Finally, the National Reading Campaign is looking for someone to join its board of directors as an executive director. Much of the role involves working with a volunteer board (though this position is paid), and managing the campaign's initiatives. Candidates living in Toronto are preferred, though those living outside of the city with an exceptional skill set will also be considered.


Do you know of a job opportunity with an innovative company or organization? Let us know!  

Toronto's ravines take up 10 times the amount of acreage of Manhattan's entire park system. And given that Manhattan and Toronto have roughly the same daytime population - about 3 million — we have a lot of grass to frolic in.

But the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority doesn't think we're taking full advantage of this aspect of the urban ecosystem.

"We have all these wonderful ravines running through our city and a lot of people don't know they're there," says Steven Heuchert, the TRCA's senior manager of planning and development.

Though he thinks the city's done "a pretty good job" of keeping the system reasonably natural, Heuchert thinks the next step is incorporation the ravines into the city, and the city into the ravines.

"For example, a lot of entrances to these ravines are nothing more than a little pathway put there to accommodate some sort of infrastructure," he says. "There may be a pipe there and maintenance people need to get in to work on the pipe, but we don't make these things generally accessible to the public."

Heuchert gave a talk on Oct. 9, hosted by the TRCA, on his thoughts about where the ravines have come from, and where they ought to be going to. It was part of a series of talks in the Ravine Portal exhibition that will be continued tomorrow night by the landscape architects of the Lower Don Master Plan, which Heuchert says puts into practice on a relatively small scale the ideas he thinks should be extended to the entire ravine system.

"The Lower Don Master Plan and the work that Evergreen is doing to try to connect their site into the city a little better are good examples of what I was speaking to in my presentation," Heuchert says, "looking at design solutions to make people recognize that the ravines are there, getting them in in a co-ordinated fashion."

Tomorrow's talk, titled "Possible Futures," will include Seana Irvine, Chief Operating Officer of Evergreen, with Bryce Miranda and Brent Raymond, landscape architects and partners at DTAH.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Steven Heuchert

She attended the ground-breaking nine years ago and now there’s officially a park in Fort York to help us remember the remarkable contributions of June Callwood.

Though it’s a regular-sized park in city-wide terms, June Callwood Park, at 0.4 hectares, may seem a little small in an area with such parks as Coronation (12.7 hectares), and Garrison Common (3.32 hectares). But with a reflecting pool, granite and bright pink rubberized benches, a hedge maze, ornamental gardens and soft surfaces for what the city parks department calls “unstructured play,” not to mention 300 trees, it’ll seem much larger than it actually is. A little like Callwood herself.

Callwood herself was hard to categorize. A journalist, she spent a good deal of her life putting more effort than most into issues she believed in. She wrote one of the first books to deal with AIDS on a personal level, in 1988, and helped found a hospice for people with AIDS, a shelter for abused and otherwise endangered women on the city’s east side that’s still running today, having helped hundreds of women out of otherwise impossible circumstances. (She was also one of the motive forces behind the writer's organization PEN Canada.)

Callwood’s work was very much of the moment. She wasn’t a city builder, she didn’t work to build a legacy. She worked to fix what was in front of her. She’s the sort of person, in other words, who has a tendency to fade into history. But a park in her name goes some way to ensuring people will continue to look up her name and see that there are Torontonians whose force of character and sense of purpose make the city, bit by bit, a better place to be.

Jill Frayne, Callwood’s daughter, and her family attended the opening ceremony.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Karen Fulcher

The Fort York visitors centre officially opened last week, and with it, a new era in the career of one of the country’s most significant historic sites.

After playing a major role in the defence of the city of York during the War of 1812, the new city of Toronto rather overtook it, and in recent decades, it’s been in real danger of disappearing from the municipal consciousness.

“Until now, Fort York National Historic Site was invisible to passersby,” says Jonathan Kearns, principal at Kearns Mancini Architects, one of the two firms behind its design. “Altered by two centuries of lake fill, it is now 500 metres from the shoreline of Lake Ontario, below the elevated concrete canopy of the Gardiner Expressway and geographically landlocked by rail corridors. The Visitor Centre establishes a prominent front door to the Fort where none previously existed. As the area is growing with new residential developments, an opportunity was identified to make Fort York a focal point, urban amenity and cultural anchor to the neighbourhood.”

The 22,000 square foot, $25-million building, carved into the landscape so as not to overwhelm the low-lying site as well as to create the impression of the promontory the place once was, is the opening gambit in a long-term development plan for the 43-acre site.

“The façade asserts a strong physical presence from Fort York Blvd, anticipating future use of the space below the Gardiner as a wonderful ‘city room,’” Kearns says. “Behind, the building emerges from Garrison Common as an illuminated wedge clad in backlit cast glass channels, allowing the low-slung buildings of the Fort to remain the architectural focus. Environmentally, the earth-sheltered architecture allows for more efficient humidity and climate control and allows control of natural light without compromising the artifacts.”

According to Kearns, the intention is for the new building not only to welcome visitors to Fort York, but to the broader area of old York/Toronto, and ultimately becoming a new urban amenity.

“The Visitor Centre will act as a interpretative hub for the entire historic area, including not only the seven-acres within the Fort's walls but also the archaeological landscape, the Garrison Common, Victoria Memorial Square, the Fort York Armoury and Garrison Creek parkland being developed to the east.

“The Visitor Centre will include visitor and information services, galleries for permanent and temporary exhibitions, spaces for meetings and educational programming, a café and administration offices. The Centre will extend beyond its primary purpose to become a new venue for events and community gatherings within the city.”

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Jonathan Kearns

A passenger who has just missed the Marilyn Bell to Billy Bishop airport and has to wait as much as 15 minutes for it to return from its 121-metre journey may well wonder, Whatever happened to that pedestrian tunnel they were building?

Turns out, tunnel-building’s a slow business, though you get some indication of how it’s going when you get across to the island and can peer down into a very large hole beside the gangway from the ferry into the terminal.

According to the Toronto Port Authority, who are doing the dig in a public-private partnership with Forum Equity Partners and contractor PCL, “The mainland terminal structure is progressing vertically as insulation, waterproofing, reinforcing steel and concrete continue to be placed. Within the tunnel, the motors that will drive the moving sidewalks have been installed and work has begun on the tunnel wall framing, as well as architectural finishes. The escalator bank roof slab on the island is complete and walls in the elevator shaft are nearing completion.”

It is also, apparently, still on budget, which was set at $82.5 million, which is coming from the partnership, as well as portions of the improvement fee departing passengers on Porter and Air Canada pay.

"The tunnel will be the only fully pedestrian, underwater tunnel in the world that connects travellers from a mainland to an airport island," says Ken Lundy, director of infrastructure, planning and environment for the TPA, "and is a key component of our traffic management strategy smoothing out the flow of passengers and alleviating congestion stemming from travellers arriving and departing in four ferry ‘waves’ per hour."

There was a glitch last April, when the diggers discovered metal sheeting and pilings from an abortive 1935 attempt at building pretty much the same tunnel, minus the Minority Report-style digital proximity-sensitive advertising the TPA and Black have planned for airport pedestrians. But in spite of that, it is still on schedule for completion early next year.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Erin Mikaluk

Waterfront Toronto is changing the face of the city, attempting to reclaim its lakeshore from centuries of misuse. But because we’re still not in the habit of spending much time there, much of what’s going on down there — and it’s a lot — is happening without most of us noticing.

Waterfront hopes to fix that in a number of ways, primarily by building up areas people are naturally drawn to. But in the meantime, it’s decided to institute a new policy of transparency, so that whoever’s interested can have easy access to whatever facts and details there are about what’s going on down there, and how. They’re letting us follow the money.

“The change in how we disclose contract values is driven mainly because other public sector organizations – the city, in particular – are moving to disclosing actual contract values,” says Waterfront Toronto communications director Andrew Hilton. “Waterfront Toronto want to ensure we keep pace with any accountability measures and best practices from the three levels of government.

“As well, we think it is important for us to contextualize how we spend and what we spend it on, so that anyone can understand what we are trying to achieve in, for example, building a park or public amenity. For us, it is critical that Torontonians are able to get the information they need to form an opinion on Waterfront Toronto’s activities: our mandate, what we do, why we do it, how much it costs, and the benefits that waterfront revitalization bring to the city.”

There is a lot of money being spent down there. The East Bayfront, just one of several neighbourhoods being constructed out of what is largely former industrial and shipping zones, has been estimated to cost $1.1 billion.

The new transparency initiative is called Get the Facts. Though Hilton says there was no immediate motivation for Get the Facts, Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong did express some public outrage in June over expenses related to Sugar Beach, accusing the organization of secret spending.

“We certainly hope that Torontonians pay attention to the revitalization of the Waterfront and why it is being done,” Hilton says. “The lack of progress on our waterfront for generations was why Waterfront Toronto was created, so we feel that informing and engaging the public on the progress we’ve made on one of the most significant parts of the city is important.”

The first fact released by Waterfront Toronto under this new programme was Hilton’s salary. He makes $130,000 a year.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Andrew Hilton

Waterfront Toronto is not satisfied to wait until the East Bayfront is finished before opening it up to cyclists. It wants them there now.

And so they’re building an interim cycling infrastructure (and one for pedestrians as well), that will serve the burgeoning area until development and funding are in place.

“East Bayfront was a formerly industrial part of the waterfront,” says Waterfront spokeswoman Sam Gileno. “It lacked basic infrastructure such as a continuous sidewalk on the south side of the street. The full revitalization of Queens Quay in this area is dependent on funding for the East Bayfront LRT. The interim pedestrian and cyclists improvements will help connect the area until funding for this important transit line is in place and construction is complete.”

According to Gileno, there are two major projects getting underway.

First is a cyclist network.

“We will create a continuous off-street Martin Goodman Trail on the south side of Queens Quay which will separate cyclists from motor vehicles along the waterfront,” she says. “By spring, 2015, when both this project and the revitalization of Queens Quay are complete, the Martin Goodman Trail will be in place from Bathurst Street all the way to Parliament Street.”

The second is a continuous sidewalk for pedestrians.

“Currently the sidewalk in this area is an asphalt path,” she says. “It will be replaced with a city standard concrete sidewalk with landscaping alongside. A north-south pedestrian crosswalk will also be added along the east side of the Parliament Street intersection.”

The two will cost $1.8 million, which includes both hard and soft costs, and will remain in place until Queens Quay has been fully renovated.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Sam Gileno

Yesterday, Waterfront Toronto and the City of Toronto gave the public an update on what's going on with the plans to develop the 12-hectare chunk of the city known as the Lower Yonge Precinct.

The parcel goes from Yonge to Jarvis, the Gardiner to Queens Quay, and includes the Toronto Star tower, the big LCBO, a Loblaws, and a lot of parking.

As the presented report says, “Since this waterfront precinct is so centrally located, its skillful and appropriate revitalization is critical to the waterfront’s success.”

The plan involves extending Harbour Street all the way to Jarvis, building a new street between Cooper and Lower Jarvis, and putting in a park. While “acknowledging its contextual relationship to the downtown core to the west and the St. Lawrence community to the north,” the proposed density doesn't seem to be learning much from St. Lawrence, long acknowledged as one of the city's most successful bits of planning. 

The most important aspect of the development of this precinct, however, is likely to be its role in connecting the centre with the eastern port lands, like the Canary District and the Distillery.

If you would like to offer your own feedback – and a good deal of this planning has been based on previous comments from interested Torontonians – you can do so here.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Samantha Gileno

A lot of people will soon be inhabiting the Waterfront, all ultimately gathered in an area that has, traditionally, been more or less unserved by transit, given its largely industrial heritage, making the roll-out of transit options, from mass transit to bicycle access to roads for cars, of paramount importance in the coming years.

On March 25, Waterfront CEO John Campbell and First Gulf CEO David Gerofsky had a conversation about the Waterfront's future and its present city-building initiatives under the moderation of Glen Murray, Ontario’s Minister of Infrastructure. The title of the discussion was "Connecting the Dots: Waterfront Roads, Rail and Redevelopment."

Both CEOs have played a role in creating entire neighbourhoods (First Gulf is responsible for redeveloping the former Lever Brothers lands), making them both familiar with the obstacles and opportunities specific to this rarefied form of city-building.

"Developing an entire neighbourhood requires a big vision and a well-thought out fully integrated plan," Campbell told Yonge Street after the event. "In order to create a vital and inclusive neigbourhood you need to ensure that there is a complimentary mix of residences, commercial and retail space, and public spaces. Having a well-thought out plan ensures that you avoid having uses that don’t fit and need to be fixed or adjusted afterwards. You also have to ensure that you have the necessary infrastructure in place to support the needs of the community – now and in the future. 
 
"Waterfront Toronto’s approach has always been strategic revitalization as opposed to simple real estate development. We take an integrated planning and design approach that looks not just at buildings but at all the things that make great cities, such as street networks that link to the rest of the city and scale that fosters a good sense of community, walkability and balancing all modes of transportation. We also emphasize parks and public spaces, and we design in a way that’s environmentally and economically sustainable."

Campbell listed public cynicism, limited resources, global competition and complexity as the main challenges behind creating communities from whoe cloth.

Though the benefits are at least as redoubtable. Campbell said that the $1.26 billion that has been invested in the Waterfront is generating $3.2 billion of economic output, $622 million in government revenues, and 16,200 years worth of full-time employment.

Included in this is $2.6 billion of development, which he helpfully spelled out for the audience. Bayside Development is worth $910 million, the PanAm/ParaPan athletes’ village $814 million, River City $383 million, Monde condos $276 million, Toronto Community Housing $95 million, and George Brown College’s Health Sciences campus $85 million.

In addition to that, Campbell claimed there were 44 recent or planned developments on privately owned land adjacent to Waterfront lands that is capitalizing on Waterfront infrastructure to the tune of $9.6 billion.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: John Campbell