[URBAN NOTE] "Denzil goes to the Waterfront"

[rfmcdonald]

Spacing Toronto's John Lorinc looks at the likely role of deputy mayor Denzil Minnan-Wong in John Tory's new administration.

Certainly, Minnan-Wong’s appointment to the Waterfront Toronto board — a position that Rob Ford held and then boycotted – has caused much tensing of muscles, given his conspicuously hostile ad hominem attacks on the agency. The tenor of his nit-picking sounded way more like the Fords (notwithstanding Minnan-Wong’s late-in-the-game repudiation of their conduct) than anything that’s come from the federal Conservatives, represented first by the late Jim Flaherty and now by Joe Oliver.

Indeed, Flaherty was unwavering in his support for Waterfront Toronto (he was one of the architects), and Oliver, as recently as last July, heaped praise on Corktown Common and pledged that waterfront revitalization “will remain a priority” for his government.

Minnan-Wong’s arrival comes at a delicate moment: For one thing, Waterfront Toronto, which is running out of its funding allocation, has sensibly proposed that it be granted borrowing powers for the balance of its statutory term. That seems like a safe bet: the agency, noted the Toronto Star, generated over $2 of direct investment for every $1 it spent since 2001, and has triggered $9.6 billion in spin-off benefits. (Those umbrellas, by the way, show up on all sorts of tourist promotion materials and have punched way above their weight when it comes to place-making, so it’s hard to know why they got so far up Minnan-Wong’s nose.)

Minnan-Wong will, of course, be expected to, um, encourage Waterfront Toronto to spend prudently. But he’ll have to do so without making a complete spectacle of himself. After all, he’ll be sitting on a board with some heavy hitters, including Brookfield director Jack Cockwell, Liberal rainmaker Ross McGregor, and Progressive Conservative stalwart David Johnston. Given that Tory’s mayoralty will be all about backroom deals and proper behaviour, it’s hard to imagine that that crowd — which is Tory’s crowd — will have much patience for this sort of political flatulence.

But I think the real reason Minnan-Wong may emerge as a somewhat more politic presence has to do with the complex and as yet unarticulated relationship between Smart Track, the re-configuration of the Don mouth and the redevelopment of the huge Unilever property, on the east side of the river immediately to the north.