Secret garden? Temperance St. green space is a hidden delight

Dennis Hanagan –

When it’s lunchtime Bay Street office workers head to Berczy Park a few blocks away. The Toronto Financial District BIA wants to change that.

The BIA is touting a little-known gem right in the Bay corridor—Cloud Gardens Park tucked between Richmond and Temperance just west of Yonge.

The BIA spent a week in the PATH walkway asking people how the neighbourhood could be improved. Few seemed aware of Cloud Gardens.

On just 0.6 acres of land the award-winning park, built in 1994, is packed with amenities: a conservatory, shade trees, seating areas, a huge wall-mounted artwork, a 5-storey waterfall and a rivulet.

“When we spoke about Cloud Gardens a lot of these stakeholders commented on some of the parks adjacent to the Financial District,” BIA policy and advocacy manager Evan Weinberg told The Bulletin on a Temperance St. patio.

“Not a lot of people spoke about Cloud Gardens. Either they didn’t know it existed or they didn’t feel it was an environment they really wanted to be in to get respite from the busy activities in this area,” Weinberg said as the resonant sound of steel banging steel rang across the road from a construction site.

The BIA wants to spruce up the park and has it on its list of things to do in its public realm strategy started in 2012. “We’ve taken a complete streets approach to this document,” said Weinberg.

“We’ve looked at pedestrian flow, sidewalk width, at operations … the streets in terms of the physical characteristics and how they operate and function,” he said.

“There’s a lot of pressure to make sure (the park) shines. This is really an asset for our area. The park itself is part of a bigger vision for this area in terms of how do we improve the public experience for the people who come and work here everyday,” said Weinberg.

Those people, workers and visitors, number about 200,000. “Even if you live Downtown you come into the Financial District to work and you go home. The challenge has always been how do you capture the needs of a community … after work hours,” said Weinberg.

The TFD BIA is bounded by Richmond, Yonge, Wellington and Simcoe streets. Its 15 square blocks generates 6% of the city’s property tax revenue and 15% of its jobs.

Weinberg said the district’s aesthetic success has so far come from what private landowners have incorporated into their developments.

“The successes of it are really on the private properties who have built towers and created these new precincts that are very high quality. But if you look at the general street and spaces in the Financial District they’re inconsistent. They’re not of high quality, they don’t really resonate with the economic heart of Ontario, Toronto, Canada,” said Weinberg.

Upgrading the district’s sidewalks, tree canopy and landscaping will be done in co-ordination with the city’s schedule for its own road and sidewalk improvements.

Improvements to Cloud Gardens will begin by power-washing the concrete. Maps will be created to show the district’s character and how to find the park.

“It’s a green space in a neighbourhood of tall buildings that will continue to get taller. In that respect it’s important that we give people who utilize the area opportunities to have space of respite.”