Toronto's New Waterfront

March 31, 2006 - The media has been buzzing the past couple of days over news of the latest waterfront development: the West Don Lands community. The West Don Lands is a 32 hectares site located east of downtown Toronto, in between Parliament Street and the Don River, and King Street and the rail corridor. Currently, the site consists of abandoned factories, derelict buildings, and open land that people seem to use as dump sites. The Province, along with its federal and municipal counterpart, recently pledged $230M to clean up the West Don Lands and create a new mixed-use community for about 11,000 people.

Highlights of this new community include:

• 6000 new residences, including 1500 units of affordable rental housing
• 25% of community to be parks and public space including the eight-hectare Don River Park
• A new light rail transit line (LRT) within a five-minute walk of all homes
• Two childcare centres
• Community centre and pool
• Elementary school

The West Don Lands is just one of Toronto's key Waterfront Projects (others include Lake Ontario Park, the Portlands, Union Station expansion, etc). But despite having established the Waterfront Revitalization Corporation in 2001 to carry out Waterfront projects, to date, little has been done. Spiraling costs and disagreements between different levels of government and citizen groups have caused delays and frustrations among those who are eager to see something (anything!) happen on the waterfront.

The new West Don Lands will incorporate all of the latest sustainable planning principles: mixed-use, high density, a new streetcar line, parks (yay!), and different types of housing. Politicians are already calling it the second St. Lawrence - the award winning neighbourhood that wowed planners around the world just 30 years ago.

Some critics have argued that given the government's previous failure to revitalize the waterfront (the previous Ataratiri neighbourhood project cost the government $350M before the Province finally pulled the plug), the entire waterfront should be sold to developers and let the private sector develop it. While this approach will definitely speed up the development process, turning such valuable waterfront land to developers will likely recreate what we are already seeing in harbourfront west: a wall of condos, with little diversity in landscape or in public space. Now that we have a second change to develop a water-class front, we should take advantage of this opportunity and develop something we can all be proud of.