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Bay Street Corridor

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Extreme Makeover: Bay Street edition
Condo residents aim to bring a sense of neighbourhood -- and even beauty -- to a concrete canyon

JOHN LORINC

Special to The Globe and Mail

On a dull morning last week, May Chow, a civil servant, nursed a milky coffee in her local café and gazed out the window as her downtown neighbourhood went about its day.

Several young parents pushed baby carriages along the sidewalk. A friend walked by and blew her a kiss. Across the street, Ms. Chow noticed a man playing with his dog in a local parkette, which sits next to the lovely old yellow brick church she attends. "Sorry," she said, interrupting the interview. "I'm seeing all my friends. I can barely go anywhere around here without being recognized."

The surprising detail about this very ordinary urban tableau is that Ms. Chow's neighbourhood is Bay Street -- an address better known for its trading floors and government edifices than for the thousands of Torontonians who now call this concrete canyon home.

The canyon factor will only get worse in coming years as developers prepare to erect massive new high-rise projects north of College Street, including a trio of condo towers proposed for the St. Michael's College lands.

But Bay Street's homeowners are fighting back, pushing for the type of local improvements that are more commonly debated in neighbourhoods like Leaside, Riverdale and the Annex -- pedestrian-friendly intersections, wider sidewalks and the availability of green space. Retirees who have downsized to these downtown high-rises have been trying to bring life to Bay's denuded streetscape, planting donated flowers and shrubs, and nursing the spindly street trees inserted into the sidewalk. And residents of 11 high-rises have now banded together to form the Bay Corridor Community Association -- led by Ms. Chow, the group is challenging the city to devise a strategy for beautifying a thoroughfare that has become the spine of an urban community of at least 6,000.

Part of the BCCA's campaign is to develop a distinctive brand for the neighbourhood, to give it the kind of unique identity that other downtown areas now enjoy. But these stirrings of neighbourhood pride could be undermined by the deadening impact of a wall of new high-rises, which will add 3,700 units to the area north of College. Ms. Chow worries the buildings going up on the St. Mike's land will snuff out the views of St. Basil's Church, which sits on the edge of the site. And she's extremely concerned about a 37-storey tower slated for the little parkette at the corner of St. Joseph and Bay, where a stand of chestnut trees and a bit of grass provide residents with a respite from the ubiquitous concrete.

"Must we get rid of everything?" Ms. Chow asks, noting that access to the area's only other green space -- Queen's Park -- has always been extremely difficult because it involves traversing four lanes of heavy traffic.

In fact, the possible loss of that parkette underscores one of the shortcomings in the way the city has pursued downtown intensification. As Ms. Chow observes, council wants to promote density downtown. But the city has failed to invest in the pedestrian realm, which becomes ever more crucial as Bay Street fills up with towering condos. "Think of all the people who live here," she says. "Do they sit in their teeny condos all the time? No."

Councillor Kyle Rae (Toronto-Centre) is adamant about saving the parkette. "I've told them there is no way. It's the last piece of green space on Bay Street."

Nevertheless, city officials concede they have never bothered developing a comprehensive streetscape plan for upper Bay, despite two decades of intensive residential development.

Earlier this year, Ms. Chow and her colleagues decided to force the issue by recruiting a team of University of Toronto planning students to draw one up; the students presented their ideas recently to representatives of the community association. Their vision includes consistent street furniture, less sidewalk clutter, more greenery and distinctive signage to emphasize the area's identity.

They also proposed transforming that parkette into a focal point of upper Bay, using improved landscaping designed to connect that space visually with the street and the buildings on the east side. Ms. Chow points out that something as simple as turning the forlorn benches to face into the park would improve things in the short term.

Bay Street's problems are no mystery to some of Toronto's top urban designers, but they've never been asked to come up with ideas for improvements. "It's very basic," shrugs architect Siamak Hariri, a partner in Hariri Pontarini. "Make wide sidewalks, put in trees and plant them properly. There needs to be a coherent plan for this street."

Architect James Brown, who designed Dundas Square, goes a step further, saying the city must narrow Bay and encourage landowners to open up the ground floors of their buildings to provide more pedestrian-friendly retail space.

Eric Pedersen, Toronto's program manager for urban design, agrees that the Bay corridor would benefit from the sort of facelift that occurred on St. George Street when the city, University of Toronto and a private donor invested $5-million in an impressive landscaping strategy extending from Bloor to College. "We're not getting more parks," he says. "But we can do something with the street."

With Bloor Street poised to get a major facelift and city officials now looking at replacing the middle lane of Jarvis with a landscaped median, Mr. Pedersen says Bay Street could also be a candidate for that kind of transformation.

Defending the city's inaction, Mr. Rae says he has been waiting for years for this neighbourhood to get its act together. "The sense of community is missing."

But Ms. Chow says the residents have had a tough time overcoming the "silo effect" in a vertical neighbourhood that doesn't have so much as a community newspaper to coalesce around. Yet despite the obstacles, something is happening. The community association's increasingly outspoken membership is now peppering Mr. Rae's office with requests for benches, drinking fountains and other ordinary amenities that most low-rise neighbourhoods take for granted.

Noting how the spindly street trees invariably succumb only a few years after being planted, Ms. Chow recounts a chat with her local councillor. "Kyle Rae told me, 'May, you've got to slow down.' I said, 'Yes, but you've got to understand: We're evolving, we're growing up.' "
 
""Must we get rid of everything?" Ms. Chow asks, noting that access to the area's only other green space -- Queen's Park -- has always been extremely difficult because it involves traversing four lanes of heavy traffic."

St. Mike's and Vic are crawling with green spaces equivalent to parkettes. They're private property, but there's no fences or anything on them. And there's two signalized places to cross over into Queen's Park from the east.
 
And so it came to pass that Bay Street's highrise NIMBY's devised a strategy of harnessing the appeal of green space, parkettes and shrubbery in order to preserve their views, even though their own towers - such as ROCP - had already ruined the view corridor up Bay Street by looming over historic buildings such as Old City Hall.
 
I would think anyone who chose Bay street to live wasn't considering green space when they were looking for a condo.
 
Highrise NIMBY's soon "go green" when their precious view is endangered by people who share exactly the same values as they do.
 
I don't get the hate directed towards the themes in the article. Bay street needs help (trees and better street architecture) and we should celebrate anyone trying to make the street better (and nowhere in the article did anyone complain about losing apartment window views).

Its amazing how the word "NIMBY" is thrown around as a label (like 'racist' or 'communist'). It makes the word meaningless, if its not already.
 
I have no problems with people moving into a neighbourhood and trying to improve it, whether that be by encouraging greenery or by Siamak Hariri's suggestion of opening up the base of towers to encourage retail.
 
I agree with alklay... what's with the hostility? Bay St doesn't work. It's a lifeless collection of bland towers. Recognising it as such is a good first step.
 
Hey, you might as well heap scorn on St. James Towners with any concern about encroachments on Rosedale Valley...
 
May Chow has to traverse the heavy traffic of Bay Street to get to her parkette.
 
So anyone who would rather view a historic church and some green space, as opposed to yet another condo building on a street full of condos, is a 'whiny" NIMBY? And anyone who wants coherent street furniture and wants improvements in their neighbourhood, is an Annex "whiny wannabee"?

May this city have, for the sake of its pedestrian realm, and its historical buildings and green spaces, more whiny wannabee NIMBYs. The developers seem to be able to take care of themselves.
 
The essence of highrise NIMBY-ism:

"Ms. Chow worries the buildings going up on the St. Mike's land will snuff out the views of St. Basil's Church, which sits on the edge of the site. And she's extremely concerned about a 37-storey tower slated for the little parkette at the corner of St. Joseph and Bay, where a stand of chestnut trees and a bit of grass provide residents with a respite from the ubiquitous concrete."

The whiny wannabee-just-like low-rise Leaside / Riverdale /Annex references; the use of a perfectly respectable word like "canyon" as if it has no place in describing what is acceptable or desirable in the downtown heart of a huge city like Toronto; and scare-mongering sentences like: "the deadening impact of a wall of new high-rises ..." without any discussion of the design or placement of these buildings, show these people just don't get it.

Also, the appeal of Queen's Park is precisely because you have to traverse heavy traffic to get to it: it is part of a separate "Forbidden City" realm along with the U of T campus, not part of a street where high-rise condo owners live.

And they've roped students into their scheme too - to come up with a BIA-like signage and street furniture system to promote their separate development, a sure sign of NIMBY power flexing its muscle.
 
Does anyone know what's going in on with the site on Wellesley between Yonge and Bay on the south side. It's been boarded with no activity for ages. Maybe they should build a park in that site.
 
To me, "coherent street furniture" means designs and standards that are applied city-wide, not the patchwork of different looks for each part of town based on BIA's with widely differing ideas of what constitutes good design and vastly different levels of wealth, that we have now - and which are increasing inequality in the public realm.

The Annex residents, through their various ploys, have done their darndest to button down their neighbourhood so tightly that it will never, ever change. Will the evolution of high rise communities along those same lines follow? Vote-hungry Kyle Rae, who defends the city's inaction until residents demand it, seems to confirm this.

NIMBY's of Ni: We shall say "Ni" to you ... if you do not appease us.

Kyle Rae: Well what is it you want?

NIMBY's of Ni: We want ... A SHRUBBERY!

Kyle Rae: A what?

NIMBY's of Ni: Ni! Ni! Ni! Ni!

Kyle Rae: No! No! Please, please, no more! We will find you a shrubbery.

NIMBY's of Ni: You must return here with a shrubbery ... or else you will never be re-elected.
 
(This question pertains to Bay, south of Union St.)

Hey guys, I've been living abroad for a year and a half now, and while I'm abreast of most of the new buildings going up in the city, I still haven't heard anything about what's going on with the land to the east of the ACC.

I'm just thinking that this would be a great place to build a landmark tower, something like Roppongi Hills Tower here in Tokyo. I would hope that the city of Toronto and some developer do something incredible with this site. The location is prime, south of Union St., across from the ACC, and less than a 10 minute walk from the Waterfront and the Skydome. Just one promblem: that damn Gardiner, but then again, Roppongi Hills Tower is situated across from an elevated expressway. If they can make it work in Tokyo, no reason the same can't be done in Toronto.


If there's another thread on this forum relating to this topic, please direct me to it.
 

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