Waking from the Gardiner's urban sleep
Sometimes big changes come in small moves. Consider the arrival of a coffee shop, Second Cup, at 33 Bay St. If that address doesn't conjure up any images, that's because it belongs to a new building south of Lake Shore Blvd. on the east side of the street in the curve of the Gardiner on-ramp.
The view is among the best, though not one most of us have had the pleasure of enjoying. That's because, until now, the site had been dismissed as a wasteland. Cast in permanent shadow, facing onto raised highways, concrete columns and a forest of skyscrapers: this is the urban landscape up close and personal.
It might still be a bit much for many, but don't forget, the Air Canada Centre is just across the corner, the waterfront a few metres to the south, a parking lot to the north and, of course, any number of office towers and highrise condos, each occupied by hundreds of inhabitants.
While the debate on taking down the Gardiner has all but disappeared from consciousness, the elevated expressway is being quietly incorporated into city life. A couple of months ago and much farther west, a bottom section of the Gardiner became the location of a permanent artwork by Kim Tomczak and Lisa Steele. Meanwhile, Yonge beneath the Gardiner has been transformed by a recent city landscaping effort. Though unfinished, the space is alive as never before.
What's unfolding here is the result of a new attitude to the city, and how it should be occupied. Until now, the land beneath the Gardiner was also beneath contempt. But the influx of residents and workers has changed all that. Suddenly, even an orphaned site like the one occupied by Second Cup has value.
The speed of change has led to some dangerous incongruities. For example, Harbour St., which between Bay and Yonge serves as an eastbound exit ramp from the Gardiner, is now the main street for thousands living at the massive Pinnacle condo complex. The pedestrian-hostile lights at Bay and Lake Shore are also no longer appropriate and the on-ramp itself has become a serious hazard for those on foot.
At some point, the city will have to redo it, much as it has the Gardiner exit on Yonge.
"It's been good," says owner/franchisee Heather Lithgow, who opened the café just last month. "Many people don't know we're here yet, but there's a lot of walk-in traffic. And a lot of people tell us, `Oh wow, what a great location.'"
Toronto hasn't reached Tokyo-level densities yet; in that city you can sit and eat a bowl of noodles under an expressway. And although action is unlikely in this car-addicted region, tearing down the Gardiner would have been the preferred option.
But watching as the city colonizes itself from within can be interesting; the ideas that prevailed when the Gardiner was planned and constructed, and which created this landscape in the first place, have since been discredited. Districts long set aside for the infrastructure of industry and transportation are fast being turned into residential neighbourhoods. Every morning dog-walkers can be seen happily wandering the urban darkness of the Gardiner.
The question is whether the city can keep up with itself; as Lithgow's coffee shop makes clear, she and the real estate scouts at Second Cup are well ahead of the urban planners.
Despite the awkwardness of this transitional period, the urbanizing forces now unleashed are remaking Toronto from top to bottom. It's a job that will never be finished, but at least it has started.
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/732445--waking-from-the-gardiner-s-urban-sleep
....i hope today is no indication of what could happen without the Gardiner Expy.