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Liberty Village Public Realm and Community Services and Facilities Study

N

Northern Light

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The City is initiating a study of the Liberty Village Public Realm as well as Community Services and Facilities.

The study will inform future investments in parkland, recreation centres, childcare etc.

Report here: https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2021/te/bgrd/backgroundfile-167845.pdf

Of note from the report.

1) I'm not sure I've seen the City combine public realm and CS & F studies before. (speculation on my part that this means at least one street/sidewalk as park plan is being discussed)

2) The list of City agencies with their finger in this pie also suggests interesting things............of note CreateTO is in on this.

Full list of agencies/departments in on the consult, here:

1623425528439.png


3) A list of City properties within the area being examined.

1623425621106.png


Traffic Services being in play explains the Police involvement.

I would be both surprised and disappointed if the Green P lot survived this. Though you can be sure they will want a new underground garage nearby.

I can see why CreateTO is on the team, there are multiple sites that could support redevelopment, and I can see the City leveraging that to pay for improvements to the remaining sites as well as cover
at least a portion of the cost of relocating certain functions.

Report due in Q3 2022.
 
Northern Light said:
The City is initiating a study of the Liberty Village Public Realm as well as Community Services and Facilities.

The study will inform future investments in parkland, recreation centres, childcare etc.

Report here: https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2021/te/bgrd/backgroundfile-167845.pdf

Of note from the report.

1) I'm not sure I've seen the City combine public realm and CS & F studies before. (speculation on my part that this means at least one street/sidewalk as park plan is being discussed)

2) The list of City agencies with their finger in this pie also suggests interesting things............of note CreateTO is in on this.

Full list of agencies/departments in on the consult, here:

View attachment 327024

3) A list of City properties within the area being examined.

View attachment 327025

Traffic Services being in play explains the Police involvement.

I would be both surprised and disappointed if the Green P lot survived this. Though you can be sure they will want a new underground garage nearby.

I can see why CreateTO is on the team, there are multiple sites that could support redevelopment, and I can see the City leveraging that to pay for improvements to the remaining sites as well as cover
at least a portion of the cost of relocating certain functions.

Report due in Q3 2022.
Click to expand...

That huge GreenP lot would make for a potentially very nice central park in the neighbourhood...
 
I remember hearing rumours that GreenP was pushing for a structured garage at Atlantic and Liberty years ago - that probably died a rightful death.

Agreed that It's an excellent potential park location though. Lamport Stadium Green P is probably the best bet though and have the Atlantic lot redeveloped with a large garage underneath to replace both lots.

Police Services should probably have a new building constructed in the Portlands or along Eastern Avenue and get this site redeveloped, it will have excellent transit access in a decade or so.
 
innsertnamehere said:
I remember hearing rumours that GreenP was pushing for a structured garage at Atlantic and Liberty years ago - that probably died a rightful death.

Agreed that It's an excellent potential park location though. Lamport Stadium Green P is probably the best bet though and have the Atlantic lot redeveloped with a large garage underneath to replace both lots.

Police Services should probably have a new building constructed in the Portlands or along Eastern Avenue and get this site redeveloped, it will have excellent transit access in a decade or so.
Click to expand...

With all due respect, I don't think we should be building parks on top of garages.
 
Towered said:
With all due respect, I don't think we should be building parks on top of garages.
Click to expand...
I meant the garage would go under a development at Atlantic and Liberty and the Lamport lot would become a public park. Agreed it should be avoided where possible, which is certainly possible here.

There are lots of examples of successful parks atop garages, but it's not ideal.
 
While it's great to see that the city is finally looking into how they can get more parkland, recreation centres, childcare, etc. into the neighborhood; this also shows how reactionary and backwards thinking Toronto is when it comes to planning.

They had a clean slate to design a neighborhood virtually from scratch, and they failed on virtually every level imaginable to the point Liberty Village has quite a host of issues (ie: narrow sidewalks, narrow streets, limited park space, no schools, bad transit connections, no childcare provisions, no recreation centres). Now 15+ years after they had the chance to design a proper neighborhood with thousands of residents, they are just getting around to "looking into" incorporating the things that makes a successful neighborhood.

Then you'd think the city would've learned from their mistakes, but they went on to repeat the exact same mistakes in other areas of the city since Liberty Village was developed. We've got to stop doing things backwards in this city and have community ammenities and transit ready to be put in place while developments are starting to place, not 15-25 years after the fact.
 
Amare said:
Then you'd think the city would've learned from their mistakes, but they went on to repeat the exact same mistakes in other areas of the city since Liberty Village was developed. We've got to stop doing things backwards in this city and have community ammenities and transit ready to be put in place while developments are starting to place, not 15-25 years after the fact.
Click to expand...
Maybe this is too reductive, but I wonder if this stems from Toronto’s stinginess and conservatism. Specifically, building ahead of time would be seen as a waste of money. I also get the sense that the Planning department is simply understaffed, and can’t spend time/effort on these neighbourhood plans unless directed to - and even then, it’s almost impossible to get myriad city departments to the table and execute on these plans in a timely manner (see lack of money above).

Then again, the city is talking about spending money on East Bayfront before buildings are in place, so…
 
The western side of the neighbourhood - pretty much everything from the corner of East Liberty Street and Lynn Williams, is a really neat area to wander around. Liberty Market is quite well done as a mixed-use retail and office complex. There's a lovely little plaza at Hanna and Liberty. The TPA lot offers a lot of potential. There's some lovely new small office buildings around there. Once the old boulevard parking spaces are dealt with, it will be quite easy to add wider sidewalks.

The eastern side is very poorly planned, and I do not get why there wasn't even a few extra metres for East Liberty Street's right-of-way for bike lanes and double-width sidewalks. The boulevard on the north side of East Liberty is all dirt/mud due to sidewalk overflow and condo dogs doing their business. It might have been acceptable in 2009 but not now. It will only get worse once First Capital builds up on their plaza site.


I can't wait for all the dump trucks and cement trucks going through once the Ontario Line tunneling gets started.
 
allengeorge said:
Maybe this is too reductive, but I wonder if this stems from Toronto’s stinginess and conservatism. Specifically, building ahead of time would be seen as a waste of money. I also get the sense that the Planning department is simply understaffed, and can’t spend time/effort on these neighbourhood plans unless directed to - and even then, it’s almost impossible to get myriad city departments to the table and execute on these plans in a timely manner (see lack of money above).

Then again, the city is talking about spending money on East Bayfront before buildings are in place, so…
Click to expand...
Building all the services I mentioned above would certainly be nice to have ahead of time, but at the very least they should have been put in place lock-in-step with any development that took place. That way, the services would've been ready from Day 1. But that's not the way the city has planned things in 80% of cases, and we're often playing catch up. It's more complicated then how i'm illustrating it because the OMB has screwed Toronto in numerous cases, but Toronto in the past had the chance to improve the streetscape and at least plan some services (which they didnt do from the outset in this neighborhood).

As you've touched on, there are issues with the planning department being understaffed and underfunded and it's been that way for more than a decade now. People love to complain about "over-development", "cars flooding their neighborhoods", etc. but one way to plan for a neighborhood to be able to accommodate for the increased population and traffic is through planning. Unfortunately these same people seem to value their 0% property tax increase rather then properly fund a department that plans (to an extent) city growth; then they look back and whine "why dont we have this".

By all means, i'm not giving the Toronto's planning department a pass. They've almost been equally complicit in coming up with some of the worst neighbourhood plans by a country mile. Liberty Village is a direct result of some horrid planning regiments. Yes, there are some nice parts in it that they didnt screw up (ie: Liberty Market, and the development just north of that), but the grand marjority of the area is deeply flawed beyond repair now.
 
@Amare got me thinking about how the build-out unfolded here..........

So far, I haven't been able to uncover an original Masterplan, though I think some of that may be referenced here:


The above is from 2017 and was an attempt to come up new Urban Design Guidelines in the Liberty Village area.

There is some historical information there about how things unfolded.

****

While looking, I also found this............

This blog post speaks about LV's evolution as a proposal..........and a noted a whole series of ownership flips that probably contributed to the lack of cohesive vision here.

torontorealtyblog.com

The Current Construction Boom In Liberty Village (Cont'd) | Toronto Realty Blog

It's tough to look forward without first looking back, hence Tuesday's recap of how Liberty Village came to be. But what if we DOUBLED the number of units that are there now? Oh boy...
torontorealtyblog.com torontorealtyblog.com
 
Amare said:
While it's great to see that the city is finally looking into how they can get more parkland, recreation centres, childcare, etc. into the neighborhood; this also shows how reactionary and backwards thinking Toronto is when it comes to planning.

They had a clean slate to design a neighborhood virtually from scratch, and they failed on virtually every level imaginable to the point Liberty Village has quite a host of issues (ie: narrow sidewalks, narrow streets, limited park space, no schools, bad transit connections, no childcare provisions, no recreation centres). Now 15+ years after they had the chance to design a proper neighborhood with thousands of residents, they are just getting around to "looking into" incorporating the things that makes a successful neighborhood.

Then you'd think the city would've learned from their mistakes, but they went on to repeat the exact same mistakes in other areas of the city since Liberty Village was developed. We've got to stop doing things backwards in this city and have community ammenities and transit ready to be put in place while developments are starting to place, not 15-25 years after the fact.
Click to expand...

Development in Humber Bay took that route before Liberty Village. Still hasn't been fixed.

- Paul
 
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