Toronto Lower Don Lands Redevelopment | ?m | ?s | Waterfront Toronto

News release from WT:

Waterfront Toronto to receive $65 million in tri-government funding through the Clean Water and Wastewater Fund
September 14 2016 | Area: Port Lands, Lower Don Lands Topic: sustainable development,
7382_essroc_quay_lakefilling_aerial_1_232_232_both_.jpg

Essroc Quay Lakefilling shown above in green; future re-aligned Cherry St. in grey

Today, the governments of Canada and Ontario announced a bilateral agreement that will make more than $1.1 billion in combined infrastructure funding available under the Clean Water and Wastewater Fund. The federal government is providing up to 50% of this funding for projects while the provincial government and municipalities will cover the remaining costs.

The initial list of projects to receive funding under this program includes Essroc Quay Lakefilling, a project to be completed by Waterfront Toronto. The Essroc Quay Lakefilling project, while part of the proposed scope of work for the larger Port Lands Flood Protection and Enabling Infrastructure project is a self-contained and stand-alone project that can be advanced independently of the lager scope of work.

Essroc Quay is located on the south side of the Keating Channel, where it meets Toronto’s Inner Harbour. The project will create new landmass around the current Essroc Quay through lakefilling. This will stabilize the area shoreline under flood conditions, as the current dockwall on Essroc Quay is old and is at risk of collapsing under flooding conditions. This provides a direct benefit for storm water conveyance.

This project is a prerequisite for significant work required to address a related major storm water conveyance issue: currently, the existing Cherry Street Bridge over the Keating Channel causes a significant hydraulic restriction during flood events. In order to remove this restriction, lakefilling around Essroc Quay is necessary to facilitate the future re-alignment of Cherry Street and the construction of a new bridge that will have a higher span over the Keating Channel to accommodate anticipated flood levels.

An additional part of the project is to divert an existing storm sewer that currently discharges storm water into the Essroc Quay.

The project also includes two pilot studies that will be conducted:

  1. To assess alternative technologies for dredging and managing sediment in the Channel
  2. To determine how excavated and dredged materials from the Port Lands and other brownfield sites may be treated through innovative technologies to allow for their potential reuse for purposes such as lakefill – resulting in sediment being treated as an asset, as opposed to a liability.

The project will also enhance aquatic habitat and ultimately form part of the proposed Promontory Park, which is a component of the larger Port Lands Flood Protection project.

Subject to Toronto City Council approval, the project will start construction in mid-2017 and will be completed within 18 months. Funding is provided as follows:

  • Government of Canada: $32.5 million
  • Province of Ontario: $16.25 million
  • City of Toronto: $16.25 million

The joint press release and backgrounder issued by the federal and provincial governments can be found here and here.

A full description of the Essroc Quay Lakefilling project can be found in Waterfront Toronto’s backgrounder here.

http://www.waterfrontoronto.ca/1999...g_through_the_clean_water_and_wastewater_fund

AoD
 
One of AoD's linked docs up-thread has a couple of good graphics that illustrate how the key part of this work fits into the broader redevelopment plans.

Essroc Quay is denoted by the purple highlighting:
upload_2016-9-14_14-13-51.png


Present view, left; future view, including a look at Essroc Quay following this work and how it'll integrate within the full redevelopment, right:
upload_2016-9-14_14-15-43.png


And close-up of the right image, above:
upload_2016-9-14_14-17-34.png


If Council approves the project (presumably not a given, seeing as the City has to approve spending money on this), construction is slated to start in mid-2017 and is estimated to take 18 months to complete.
 

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From the Sept Econ Dev Committee:

Presentation: http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2016/ed/bgrd/backgroundfile-96008.pdf

Looks like Castlepoint Numa have issues with the Broadview Ave. extension alignment (for parking garages?)

http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2016/ed/comm/communicationfile-62987.pdf

AoD

They say parking deck OR workshops.

I suspect it comes down to the fact they are in high growth mode and want that space for their own purposes, w/e those turn out to be.

With the above being the likely near-term choices.

***

Given the water table here, is underground parking unusually costly? Could be that it just doesn't make financial sense to them.
 
Just wanted to upload a couple pics of the area in question (mostly as a test of a technique I recently learned to extract images from PDFs). The Film District area is quite large, and Broadview Extn does seem to severe its 'core' considerably. Whether that's something that can be worked around I guess we'll find out. But reading AoD's second link, and following what's been in the news concerning it, it's apparent that the strength of our film industry is not something we want to undermine. Personally I'm not a big fan of the Broadview alignment. I'd prefer if we brought it more in line with Don Rdwy south of Lake Shore, perhaps as a grand avenue of sorts.

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*apologies if the files are too large (1mb to 1.8mb). can make smaller, which is something I prefer (esp when surfing with limited data).
 

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Presentation from the upcoming October 25 Board Meeting on Essroc Quay

http://www.waterfrontoronto.ca/uplo...sroc_quay_lakefilling___october_25_2016_1.pdf

And from the CEO Report:

Port Lands Flood Protection and Enabling Infrastructure Due Diligence Report
Final comments have been provided by the City of Toronto and the Federal and Provincial Governments and staff have addressed comments in the final version of the report. The Due Diligence report was finalized and provided to Governments on October 14, 2016. City Council and Media briefings preceded the public release of the report on October 18, 2016.
A staff presentation reprising the Media Briefing accompanies the CEO report and will be provided at the Board Meeting. (p. 3)

http://www.waterfrontoronto.ca/uploads/documents/item_4___ceo_report___october_25_2016_1.pdf

I think the date might have changed? EDIT - Yes - October 20 - from CNW Group:

http://www.newswire.ca/news-release...e-project-due-diligence-report-597610351.html

AoD
 
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Presentation from the upcoming October 25 Board Meeting on Essroc Quay

http://www.waterfrontoronto.ca/uplo...sroc_quay_lakefilling___october_25_2016_1.pdf

AoD

This specific scope of this work independent of the larger project is more clearly defined in this deck than I recall in the previous one; from the deck:

upload_2016-10-19_15-36-50.png


"This project includes the design and construction of the following elements:
- Confinement berm structures
- Rock armouring and dockwall structures
- Lakefilling
- Aquatic habitat structures and features
- Diversion of an existing storm sewer"

It also includes two pilot studies.

Council must approve the spending of $16.25M for this to go ahead; it is slated to vote on it at its November 8 meeting.
 

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Didn't tory just open another phase of the leslie spit a month or so ago? Toronto still does lake fill regularly, just not close to downtown.
 
Been a while since we did some lake infill. It's a Toronto tradition.

I think lakefilling is okay. The lake is big enough, and she takes in what Lake Erie can send her. And come to think of it we'd never really have a land supply issue if we built into the lake further. From an environmental perspective I don't think it'd be bad so long as we offset it by also creating car-free areas, naturalized peninsulas, and island nature preserves. The GLWQA and EPA would probably be on board, as would the Prov. With every teardown and development we're using dumptrucks to carry fill well outside the GTA, clogging up roads and contaminating fields and old quarries in the process. Instead we could simply haul it down to the lakefront or have it barged out.

I'd say fill, baby, fill.
 
We had a pile more headlands planned at one point, islands off the shores of Mimico, New Toronto, Long Branch, and Scarborough, than ever got built. They were mostly cancelled 20 to 30 years ago because of rising concerns about loss of aquatic animal habitats and contaminated lake fill. Since that time we've gotten much better at decontaminating soils, and more is known about how to create nearshore habitats…

So maybe that's why they are willing to consider some new lake filling again. It's still not a program that's universally approved of by marine ecologists, so it could be a long time before we get miles of new coastline.

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