Week of October 18th
A "massive" week, with a gigantic new development at Canada Square, a huge new report on rebuilding Toronto after COVID-19, and a big undertaking at Eglinton Station.
The makeover of Canada Square at Yonge & Eglinton is finally heating-up
The full extent of the Canada Square site. It includes three commercial and retail buildings, a TTC bus and subway station, and the staging grounds for LRT construction at the northwest corner. (Source: Oxford Properties)
Canada Square at the southwest corner of Yonge & Eglinton has been an attractive spot for redevelopment for more than a decade - and for good reason.
The City wants to see it redeveloped as part of its “CreateTO” program to sell-off underused land it owns. Local politicians want to see it revitalized to remove the eye-sore of the current bus station and surface parking lots. And the developer (Oxford Properties) clearly wants the site rebuilt given the enormous potential for more commercial and residential spaces, especially once the Eglinton LRT is completed in 2021 (more on that in a moment).
The redevelopment process began in the late 2000s, resurfaced in the mid 2010s, and has been relatively quiet since. Well, it is quiet no more: starting in August, Oxford Properties began roadshows with local neighbourhood associations to talk about its plans and gather input on what should be included in the site. The process will now only accelerate from here.
A project this big needs a lot of community input and to Oxford’s credit they seem to be creating lots of space to gather it. They’ve setup a dedicated project site. There’s a mailing list for regular updates (see bottom of the homepage). There’s even a portal for the community to provide comments. This won’t replace the city’s own impartial equivalents, but it is exceedingly helpful for those looking to learn and contribute. Beyond the neighbourhood group meetings that are presently underway, there’s a formal series of community input sessions planned for later this fall, per the project timeline shown below.
Plenty could still go wrong with Canada Square, but all of the above is a great start.
If you have any interest at all in participating in community planning this would be perhaps the project to follow. Not only is it a huge portion of our neighbourhood - roughly three city blocks! - but the potential options for community amenities are incredible, both due to its size and the leverage the City has as an owner of property on the site.
I expect plenty more on this project to come…
An overview of the project timeline. As of Mid-October, we are somewhere in between stages #1 and #2. (Source: Oxford Properties)
The City has 83 ideas for dealing with COVID-19 and a snitch ain’t one
On the left, the city report. On the right, an overview of all the inputs that went into it - not bad for ~4 months of work! (Source: City of Toronto)
In April 2020, the City created the Toronto Office of Recovery and Rebuild, a grammatically confusing but ambitious team who’s job was to create blueprint for how Toronto deals with future resurgences of COVID-19 and “builds back better” over the long-term once the pandemic subsides.
According to their Impacts & Opportunities report - which was released last week and will go to the mayor’s executive committee on Wednesday - they’ve been pretty busy and have 83 ideas for what the City, the province, and the federal government should do. Recommendations are separated into six sections, with a particular emphasis on addressing systemic racism interwoven throughout. The sections are:
Public Health - improving tracking of COVID-19 cases, expanding testing, and improving coordination across the system (but no, no expanded “snitch line”)
Social Determinants of Health - evaluating the adequacy of financial supports & other social programs and introducing measures to improve housing affordability
Increasing Prosperity - continuing supports for small businesses, introducing new / expanded training programs, and doubling down on investments in the tech sector
Infrastructure & Mobility - dipping into federal funding for physical and digital infrastructure - and pursuing them “with haste” (a hilariously optimistic suggestion given the history of Toronto transit)
Resilience - a (surprisingly!) narrow set of priorities for a “green recovery”, such as retrofitting existing builds to improve energy efficiency
City Services - continuation of the City’s modernization of its services to speed up response times and make everything that it can accessible digitally
The report has been criticized in some circles for being too generic to be useful. That feels a bit unfair, not because it’s inaccurate - the recommendations are indeed pretty high level - but because the report itself should be read more as a statement of the principles that will guide the work the City will have to do over the coming months should it be accepted.
There were however a few eyebrow raising sections that may have specific implications for Davisville:
Developing a “bold plan” for affordable childcare spaces with the Province and Feds (Recommendation #24) - we’re years away from this being a reality, but it is one of the most pressing needs in Davisville; definitely a topic to watch
Developing a Winter City Plan to ensure public spaces and amenities are usable when the snow starts to fall (#67) - this feels critically important if the Wave 2 shutdowns extend into the winter months
Continuing to use curb lanes for restaurant patios for a “more European Urban form” during the winter months (#68) - could this mean outdoor eating along Yonge in January? If so, yes please!
Implementing different fees for developers based on the areas they are building in, particularly to make areas with little development today more attractive (#72) - would this stem some of the current surge in midtown? It seems unlikely.
At the moment, these all remain recommendations, but it will be interesting at minimum to follow how the debates play out and where this community can contribute.
If you were brave enough to read (or, let’s face it, skim) the 240-page report, drop me a line about other interesting nuggets you saw.
Why the Eglinton LRT Station is so hard to build
And finally, it’s time for a…
A few weeks back, I wrote about new details regarding the Eglinton LRT - Toronto’s biggest and most expensive ongoing transit project - and its opening being delayed until sometime in 2021. Of particular concern to the consortium building the line (Crosslinx) was the station at Yonge and Eglinton, which was proving to be the most technically complex of the lot. It also happens to be the most important.
An article I came across last week delves into some of the reasons for the delay at this key midtown station. In short:
The new station runs under the existing Line 1, meaning they had to build sufficient supports for the weight
Line 1 has continued running throughout the project - except seemingly on weekends where I needed to use it - meaning portions of the construction had to occur in small increments to monitor for any movements in the foundation
During construction, the concrete of the existing station was found to be deteriorating and needed to be fixed (a fact that’s definitely not concerning at all to those of us who took it everyday…!)
It’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but if you’re into engineering topics and fancy architectural diagrams, the article makes for an interesting read.
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