[URBAN NOTE] On the proposed Rail Deck Park of Toronto

[rfmcdonald]

The above photo, one of the many I took in May from the top of the CN Tower, came to mind when I heard one particular news item. The big new urban development in Toronto, as described by the Toronto Star's Jennifer Pagliaro, is the proposed to roof over the rail lands as far west of the CN Tower as Bathurst Street and to build a park--Rail Deck Park--on top of this roof.

A bold new legacy park pitched by public officials for the downtown core, being dubbed Toronto’s Central Park, would link long-separated neighbourhoods and provide much needed green space.

That’s the hope of Mayor John Tory, local politicians and senior planning officials in the newly announced attempt to secure the rights to the air space over the rail corridor between Bathurst St. and Blue Jays Way to build a 21-acre deck park now being called Rail Deck Park.

Although the city made its intentions clear Wednesday, there are still many unknowns. Most critical is how to pay for the construction and maintenance of such a significant space with looming budget pressures ahead. And a project of this size, according to those pitching it, is still many years in the making.

With an area just larger than 16 regulation football fields, the proposed park would dwarf all other green spaces in the core. It’s an open space that chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat said could be “our Central Park” — a “grand civic gesture” in a part of Toronto experiencing unprecedented residential growth and one that is also the most deficient in parkland.

It's difficult to disagree with this Torontoist op-ed which thinks so much green space will be a good thing, notwithstanding the effort needed.

Tory told media the park, which would span across Bathurst Street to the Rogers Centre, would take at minimum four to five years to build, and a cost has not yet been calculated. (Other parks, by comparison, have cost upwards of tens of millions of dollars per acre.) But the City says adding more green space, especially in building-dense downtown areas, is the main priority. “We need to ensure we’re building neighbourhoods, building communities, not just building towers,” says Councillor Joe Cressy (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina), who has been advocating for more city park space. In July, Cressy proposed un-paving a parking lot near King and Spadina to create more green space downtown. Online, Torontonians are already championing the plan.

NOW Toronto placed this park in the context of efforts at greening the waterfront. (This article was also the source of the graphic I used.)

The initiative is part of the City’s TOCore project, which is responsible for developing a comprehensive plan for reshaping the downtown core. According to City stats, Toronto’s downtown population has increased by 50,000 residents in the past five years, and that population is expect to double in the next two decades. Rail Deck Park would function as the “missing link” between the King-Spadina neighbhourhood, City Place and the Waterfront.

The park is one of several green-ification projects in the works for Toronto’s west side. In late 2015, plans for the long-overdue Fort York Pedestrian and Cycle Bridge were finally unveiled. The stainless steel span expected to be completed in 2017 will connect Liberty Village and Fort York residents to the waterfront parks and surrounding spaces. It will cross two rail corridors and connect Stanley Park and Fort York.

Spacing Toronto's John Lorinc likes the idea, but is concerned about whether or not Toronto's political culture will allow its realization.

According to the area councilor Joe Cressy, Livey’s officials scrutinized a handful of key issues: the ownership of the air rights, the cost, and the technical feasibility.

The air rights, above the 27-foot level, belong to CN Rail, Toronto Terminals Railway and Metrolinx; city officials have determined that they can be acquired. But with developers actively exploring the possibility of privately buying air rights over the corridor, Cressy says council’s key move, when a staff report surfaces in September, will be to approve an official plan amendment designating the entire space above the tracks as open space.

The plan, as my colleague Kieran Delamont explains here, is going to be very expensive, even allowing for the large and unused parkland acquisition reserves that Spacing investigated last year in our “Parks in Crisis” series. Cressy contends that both the province and the feds may put money into the project. But this ask is merely the latest in a long series of big ticket asks, not least of which is the $1 billion flood protection berm that will unlock development on the Portlands. (Let’s not even talk about transit.)

Which brings me to Downsview Park. Those of you who dimly remember the early years of Jean Chretien’s Liberal regime may recall that two of his loyal foot soldiers, Art Eggleton and David Collenette, persuaded the prime minister to donate the decommissioned air force base to the City, alongside similarly high-minded pledges to establish it as Canada’s first national urban park (whatever that means).

Yet after a few years of high-end architects conjuring up fancy visions, it became clear that no one was prepared to put out to actually build the thing, at which point Canada Lands Corporation, the ultimate owner of the land, began cleaving off parcels at the edges for re-development with an eye to using the proceeds to build the park. The idea of encircling a large park with higher density buildings is actually sound planning, but this cross-subsidization strategy was accomplished in an ad hoc and haphazard way. There was more than a little disingenuousness from the various powers that be, and plenty of anti-development yodeling from Maria Augimeri, the local councilor.

If the Rail Deck Park can be achieved, I think it should. Torontonians want and deserve nice things, and this downtown park would definitely be one such thing. I just hope, with Lorinc, that we will be able to overcome our dysfunctional political culture long enough to build it.