East Bayside project to benefit from lessons learned from past planning failures

By Eric Morse –

Architect’s rendering of a view down Bonnycastle St. retail and entertainment area, with the harbour in the distance.

If all goes well in the tortuous process of development approvals for Toronto’s Waterfront, the year 2015 to 2021 could well see a new mixed-use neighbourhood of 1800 or so housing units coming into existence on the Harbourfront between Sherbourne Common Park and the Parliament St. slip, the land now known as 261 Queen’s Quay E.

The proposed development would be an eastward extension of the redevelopment of the waterfront already taking place in the shape of Corus Quay and George Brown College.

Nov. 28 marked a further tiny step in the process, as city planners and councillor Pam McConnell’s office conducted community consultations on the application for rezoning. It was a small meeting, attended mainly by stakeholders and community group representatives from the St Lawrence Neighbourhood Association, West Donlands, Gooderham and Worts, and Corktown, who attended to represent the future residents of the currently uninhabited site.

Principal elements of the application are a reduction of the water’s edge promenade width to accommodate a proposed waterfront mixed vehicle/pedestrian street, expansion of the proposed Aitken Place Park in the middle of the area, and some reconfiguration of proposed “animation areas” (read: “shopfronts and cafes” in ordinary peoplespeak) and alterations to the boundaries of the height permissions, and the relocation of proposed sites for a school (eastward of Parliament Slip) and community centre (westward within the 261 Queen’s Quay precinct).

As explained by the developer Hines Canada, the two-phase proposal is in many ways a “back-to-the-future” concept; an attempt to create a community from scratch based on ancient and traditional organically-evolved waterside neighbourhoods. The narrow street by the waterside is a major element; as conceived, it would be a shared pedestrian/cyclist/vehicle limited-speed street, meant for accessibility, and not for use as a thoroughfare.

Streets running perpendicular to the waterfront and Queen’s Quay would be retail and cafe frontage with ample sidewalk space for spillover, again designed to allow easy access to the community and use by its residents. Building heights are designed to rake backward, with the lowest residential units (max 20 meters) along the waterfront street/promenade, to a maximum of 38 m for the predominantly commercial blocks along the south side of Queen’s Quay E.

“We started off this project trying to figure out how to create Toronto’s next great neighbourhood,” explained Mark Potter of Hines. “To do that we needed a benchmark, and the benchmark was a cold winter afternoon in January. It all works in the summer—everything works in the summer—but in winter… you have to think hard about how to make a winter development work. So we looked at sites like Quebec City, Stockholm, and Old Montreal. We aimed for intimate spaces that capture sunlight, streets as narrow as we can get them; streets that slow down traffic, that allow people to cross easily without worry, that mix pedestrians with cyclists and vehicles, that create a deliberately inefficient traffic flow to slow down the pace.”

“We’ve created a street at the water’s edge such that if you’re not an athlete you can still get down there. You can sit in a nice cafe on the water’s edge on a cold winter’s day… it’s an accessibility challenge that turns into revitalization.”

Robert Glover of urban planning firm Bousfields Inc. has decades of experience on the waterfront dating back to Ataratiri, the original West Don Lands project from 1987. He knows far too well how many ways things can go off the rails in the convoluted path from concept to execution.

“We’re trying to take lessons from the past 20 years,” says Glover. “Learning from Harbourfront, the railway lands, and the St. Lawrence Neighbourhood, avoid mistakes that were made before, we’ll base the project on more mid-rise buildings and try to build a proud community on the water’s edge.”