A
AlvinofDiaspar
Guest
From the Globe:
THE PERFECT HOUSE: WATERFRONT REDEVELOPMENT
Plan for park goes largely unnoticed
Designs are being drawn up for a priceless city asset. We should pay attention
JOHN BENTLEY MAYS
A couple of weeks ago, Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corp. (TWRC) held a rather timid public launch down at Cherry Beach for the master plan of Lake Ontario Park. It was not a secret event -- about 60 citizens showed up -- but it might as well have been secret, for the zero oomph and fanfare TWRC put into it.
What made this meeting seem surprisingly low-key, among other things, was the contrast between its small ambitions and the largeness of its topics. The making of the master plan, a $1-million design and consultative process spread over 14 months, will spell out the future for 500 acres of Toronto's priceless waterfront between Cherry Beach and Leslie Street. This fact alone should make Toronto sit up and take notice.
But after this swath of wetlands, shoreline, thicket and forest is stabilized and rejuvenated -- the budget for start-up work is $24-million -- the 500-acre patch will become part of the thousand-acre Lake Ontario Park. This new front yard for Toronto, which could be magnificent, will embrace new and existing parkland and boardwalks from Cherry Beach and Tommy Thomson Park eastward to the R.C. Harris Filtration Plant.
Also making the waterside event seem small was the merely polite introduction it gave to the team TWRC has hired to complete the master plan. Some razzamatazz would have been appropriate. Team leader James Corner, founder and director of the New York firm Field Operations, is one of North America's outstanding landscape architects and urban designers, and Toronto should be glad to have him on its side.
Mr. Corner's current projects include the transformation of a 2,200-acre Staten Island dump site into a culturally vivid, ecologically diverse park, and (with the architectural office Diller Scofidio + Renfro) the creation of New York's celebrated High Line park, which will see a 2.4-kilometre stretch of abandoned elevated railway turned into a new urban trail floating above the sidewalks.
"Part of the magic of the thing is its complete separation from the city," Mr. Corner has said of the High Line scheme. "It is completely severed from everything around it, and that is what makes it an interesting thing to walk on."
The challenge of Lake Ontario Park is, of course, exactly opposite: to knit together very diverse environments and patterns of usage along a long stretch of waterfront, and usefully tie this large and complicated reality back to the city. If Toronto gets from Field Operations the bold and imaginative plan we need, Lake Ontario Park could also become (as High Line park has become in New York) a much-needed encouragement to residential and commercial development in the rundown areas of its neighbourhood.
But before the New York team makes its final report, some time next summer, we can hope it pays serious attention to the suggestions brought to the launch meeting by those 60-odd citizens who turned out. Though not numerous, these waterfront activists, ecologists, urbanists and citizens without portfolio were vocal and often vociferous -- yet, as I learned in the course of the evening's discussion, most of them shared certain abiding concerns.
Whatever else Lake Ontario Park may be or do, for example, it should provide tranquillity and an opportunity for spiritual renewal within the hectic grid of Toronto life. It should not be forced to provide a space for every interest or sport; Toronto, after all, is a city of parks, and there is room in the city for everything. Rather, the park should be more of what it is already: a margin of wild nature between the city and Lake Ontario, a zone where water and land meet in a wonderful variety of ways.
A number of the thoughts and proposals that surfaced during the meeting had surely been simmering in the minds of participants for a long time.
Several people correctly urged that Lake Ontario Park always be considered in the context of other watery systems, especially the Don River.
Anciently, the Don emptied into a 1,300-acre marsh -- a paradise for waterfowl, it is said -- that, by the early 20th century, had become a stinking, pestilential sewer. The marsh was filled in and paved over just before the First World War, creating the Port Industrial District, and the waters of the Don were diverted into the harbour.
What should happen to the Don's waters now? I, for one, hope TWRC and the designers of Lake Ontario Park will think seriously of recreating a bit of the old marsh.
James Corner and his colleagues at Field Operations will be back in November to show us what they've been up to. When they do, I hope TWRC makes some noise about it, and involves more people in this fascinating discussion and venture.
AoD
THE PERFECT HOUSE: WATERFRONT REDEVELOPMENT
Plan for park goes largely unnoticed
Designs are being drawn up for a priceless city asset. We should pay attention
JOHN BENTLEY MAYS
A couple of weeks ago, Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corp. (TWRC) held a rather timid public launch down at Cherry Beach for the master plan of Lake Ontario Park. It was not a secret event -- about 60 citizens showed up -- but it might as well have been secret, for the zero oomph and fanfare TWRC put into it.
What made this meeting seem surprisingly low-key, among other things, was the contrast between its small ambitions and the largeness of its topics. The making of the master plan, a $1-million design and consultative process spread over 14 months, will spell out the future for 500 acres of Toronto's priceless waterfront between Cherry Beach and Leslie Street. This fact alone should make Toronto sit up and take notice.
But after this swath of wetlands, shoreline, thicket and forest is stabilized and rejuvenated -- the budget for start-up work is $24-million -- the 500-acre patch will become part of the thousand-acre Lake Ontario Park. This new front yard for Toronto, which could be magnificent, will embrace new and existing parkland and boardwalks from Cherry Beach and Tommy Thomson Park eastward to the R.C. Harris Filtration Plant.
Also making the waterside event seem small was the merely polite introduction it gave to the team TWRC has hired to complete the master plan. Some razzamatazz would have been appropriate. Team leader James Corner, founder and director of the New York firm Field Operations, is one of North America's outstanding landscape architects and urban designers, and Toronto should be glad to have him on its side.
Mr. Corner's current projects include the transformation of a 2,200-acre Staten Island dump site into a culturally vivid, ecologically diverse park, and (with the architectural office Diller Scofidio + Renfro) the creation of New York's celebrated High Line park, which will see a 2.4-kilometre stretch of abandoned elevated railway turned into a new urban trail floating above the sidewalks.
"Part of the magic of the thing is its complete separation from the city," Mr. Corner has said of the High Line scheme. "It is completely severed from everything around it, and that is what makes it an interesting thing to walk on."
The challenge of Lake Ontario Park is, of course, exactly opposite: to knit together very diverse environments and patterns of usage along a long stretch of waterfront, and usefully tie this large and complicated reality back to the city. If Toronto gets from Field Operations the bold and imaginative plan we need, Lake Ontario Park could also become (as High Line park has become in New York) a much-needed encouragement to residential and commercial development in the rundown areas of its neighbourhood.
But before the New York team makes its final report, some time next summer, we can hope it pays serious attention to the suggestions brought to the launch meeting by those 60-odd citizens who turned out. Though not numerous, these waterfront activists, ecologists, urbanists and citizens without portfolio were vocal and often vociferous -- yet, as I learned in the course of the evening's discussion, most of them shared certain abiding concerns.
Whatever else Lake Ontario Park may be or do, for example, it should provide tranquillity and an opportunity for spiritual renewal within the hectic grid of Toronto life. It should not be forced to provide a space for every interest or sport; Toronto, after all, is a city of parks, and there is room in the city for everything. Rather, the park should be more of what it is already: a margin of wild nature between the city and Lake Ontario, a zone where water and land meet in a wonderful variety of ways.
A number of the thoughts and proposals that surfaced during the meeting had surely been simmering in the minds of participants for a long time.
Several people correctly urged that Lake Ontario Park always be considered in the context of other watery systems, especially the Don River.
Anciently, the Don emptied into a 1,300-acre marsh -- a paradise for waterfowl, it is said -- that, by the early 20th century, had become a stinking, pestilential sewer. The marsh was filled in and paved over just before the First World War, creating the Port Industrial District, and the waters of the Don were diverted into the harbour.
What should happen to the Don's waters now? I, for one, hope TWRC and the designers of Lake Ontario Park will think seriously of recreating a bit of the old marsh.
James Corner and his colleagues at Field Operations will be back in November to show us what they've been up to. When they do, I hope TWRC makes some noise about it, and involves more people in this fascinating discussion and venture.
AoD