[PHOTO] Two photos of HTO Park
May. 27th, 2016 09:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldHTO Park is officially spelled HTO. This is, as Wikipedia notes, "a play on H2O, the chemical formula for water, since "TO" is commonly used to refer to Toronto and it is a waterfront park." Since most people don't use subscript, I'll stick with HTO.
The HTO Park is a lovely one, a carefully designed and popular urban beach park built on reclaimed industrial land. I really like the yellow umbrellas planted in the sand below the condos. I can see this being a huge hub in summer, even if Lake Ontario is not accessible for swimmers.
The below photo is one of my favourite from Victoria Day. (I even managed to catch a seagull mid-flight.)
Looking down from the CN Tower's Skypod, the HTO Park's layout, beach in the front and grassy area in the back, is clear.
Sean Marshall's June 2007 "Toronto’s Waterfront takes a big step forward", published very soon after the HTO Park opened, provides what I think is the canonical Toronto take on the park.
The HTO Park is a lovely one, a carefully designed and popular urban beach park built on reclaimed industrial land. I really like the yellow umbrellas planted in the sand below the condos. I can see this being a huge hub in summer, even if Lake Ontario is not accessible for swimmers.
The below photo is one of my favourite from Victoria Day. (I even managed to catch a seagull mid-flight.)
Looking down from the CN Tower's Skypod, the HTO Park's layout, beach in the front and grassy area in the back, is clear.
Sean Marshall's June 2007 "Toronto’s Waterfront takes a big step forward", published very soon after the HTO Park opened, provides what I think is the canonical Toronto take on the park.
HtO is billed as “Toronto’s Urban Beach” – its centrepiece is a long sand pit extending along the water’s edge, with metal yellow beach umbrellas providing shade, and Muskoka chairs pitched in the sand. On the edge is part of the new wooden boardwalk that will front the lake throughout the waterfront, with only a short metal rail separating it from the water’s edge.
The Toronto Star’s architecture critic, Christopher Hume, praised the park, but in a separate article, also highlighted the glacial pace of redevelopment (funding was promised while Pierre Trudeau was Prime Minister) and all the bureaucratic red tape and modifications made to the urban beach. Apprently the metal umbrellas were considered a safety risk should children decide to climb on them, and modifications were made to eliminate the steps leading into the water.
Despite all the setbacks, the incomplete park (the western half is still under construction) is a huge success. On the first Saturday night, the park was full of families, children were playing the sand pit, Afro music playing and gathering a crowd, others people walking along the water. There were at least three or four different uses that I saw at one time. Apart from not being able to swim (swimming in the inner harbour is both illegal and dangerous with all the boaters), it really feels like a beach.
