Toronto Star ePaper

City staff float idea of more parks

Bathurst Quay, Portland Slip among three proposals to add green space to downtown core

GHADA ALSHARIF

A decrepit parking garage at the foot of Bathurst Street may be transformed into a new waterfront park, according to a proposal from city staff designed to bring more green space to downtown Toronto.

According to the plan, a structure built over the garage on Bathurst Quay and the adjacent Portland Slip would transform the area next to the Canada Malting silos into a 1.3-hectare waterfront park.

“For so many years the city has turned its back on the waterfront,” Mayor John Tory said speaking with reporters during a press conference on Tuesday. “I’m excited about the Bathurst Quay waterfront park because we get to open up three more acres of our waterfront … People just want to be able to come and touch the water.”

The Bathurst Quay project is one of three proposals heading to executive committee on Tuesday that are part of the city’s push to identify opportunities for large parks near the downtown core, where the population is projected to double from nearly 238,000 people in 2016 to 475,000 by 2041. If approved at committee, the proposals would then go to city council July 19.

The other staff proposals include a linear 3.6-hectare park along University Avenue and Queen’s Park Crescent connecting the financial and health science districts, and a plan to “set the framework for the phased and co-ordinated construction of a connected rail corridor park” west of Union Station.

None of the proposed parks are currently funded and the city is warning that current capital projects will have to be put on hold if it doesn’t receive emergency funding from the provincial and federal governments.

Coun. Joe Mihevc (Ward 10 Spadina—Fort York) told the Star that he expected money to come in once there is a cohesive plan.

“There’s no doubt that these are projects that are expensive, and we will need to be very smart. But at this point, I don’t think the money side is the most important issue,” Mihevc said.

“The most important issue is to get the vision together. If you get the vision together … then the money will follow because the residents will say, yes, we want this. And then you can look at tax options.”

For the Bathurst proposal, Tory said that public consultations could start within the next 18 months with the aim to complete construction by 2028 or 2029 subject to available capital funding.

The two-level parking garage on the site that is currently operated by Harbourfront Centre was built in 1985 and would take millions to repair. An entire level of the garage is currently closed due to “structural deficiencies,” the staff report says, and it is anticipated the garage will be closed “as early as 2024.”

Championed by Tory, the original plan of building an 8.3-hectare Rail Deck Park west of Union Station was overruled by a provincial tribunal in 2021 that said developers can build a proposed multi-tower office and condo development over the downtown rail corridor.

“The big vision of the Rail Deck Park doesn’t appear to be before us,” Mihevc said Tuesday, adding that it is more likely that the city would be able to negotiate pieces of the rail deck incrementally with developers as part of “their green space obligations” when the time comes. If approved, construction on the University Avenue proposal is not expected to start for at least another decade.

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2022-07-06T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-07-06T07:00:00.0000000Z

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