From the Globe Real Estate section, by John Bentley Mays:
THE PERFECT HOUSE: TORONTO DEVELOPMENT
A reminder of the coming waterfront makeover
Summer party to show residents just how big -- and exciting -- the changes will be
JOHN BENTLEY MAYS
This afternoon at Queens Quay, the people charged with creating Toronto's waterfront of the 21st century are kicking off an especially interesting promise of things to come.
The 10-day reduction of part of sprawling Queens Quay to two compact lanes of car traffic, the extension of the popular Martin Goodman Trail along the inner harbour, the temporary greening of roadways -- they'll all be part of a festive glimpse of what the 3½ kilometres of water's edge between Bathurst and Parliament streets will look like in a few year's time, after the Rotterdam architectural firm West 8 gets through with it.
This summer party, brought to you by Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corp. (TWRC), will probably be a lot of fun. But it will also be a public reminder (as it's intended to be) that TWRC is indeed busy with the vast, complicated, $17-billion rollout of thousands of homes, myriad shops and parks and new streets, some museums and galleries and artists' studios, and much else, on 2,000 acres of downtown real estate. Apart from the urban activists who regularly turn out for the TWRC's occasional public consultations, Torontonians have a tendency to forget just how big and potentially exciting this project is -- and how firmly it's under way. We shouldn't.
I got my own reminder of how things are going a couple of weeks ago during a conversation with John Campbell, the restlessly energetic president and chief executive officer of TWRC.
"Our goal is not to build a nice, cozy neighbourhood by the water, but a gateway to the city that says to the world: 'We're here,' " Mr. Campbell told me. "Right now -- I use the analogy of submarine -- we are going full-speed, but we are just breaking surface. That's because, to do anything in this city, you have to plan, you have to consult, do environmental assessments, all that work."
Mr. Campbell named two zones that are moving up a step from the planning stage, toward the day when we will see some architectural action on the ground. One is the West Don Lands, a 90-acre swatch of barren ground at the mouth of the Don River, which currently has shovels in the ground and a four-kilometre hoarding around it. Requests for development proposals go out for this $2-billion, mostly residential tract in the autumn.
The other property, intended to include more offices, workplaces, studios and cultural attractions, is a 55-acre portion of the inner harbour that TWRC calls the East Bayfront. Calls for developers for this $2-billion project will go out next spring.
From where Mr. Campbell sits, the chances of bringing good things to pass are currently very good. "It's not an endeavour that will be unilateral, nor should it be in a democracy like Toronto. But we have the moral suasion and political clout to get things done, and we have the support of the players: $1.5-billion promised, and close to $600-million in actual signed contracts."
The search for private investment begins in earnest this autumn. "When the requests for proposals go out for the West Don Lands this fall, I think we'll get a good response, from both local and international developers, who see this as a good investment because we can provide a certain size." Australian and Asian investors are taking an interest in this mainly residential phase of the project, Mr. Campbell noted.
"But there will be other opportunities that we have to look at, including district energy. We will be putting in an energy system, and we will need private-sector investment in that. We have some seed capital, but we don't have sufficient government funds for all the projects.
"The other area we're looking at is participation from the high-tech sector. One of the things we're doing, apart from the real estate side, is the intelligent community aspect. We want to enjoin the private high-tech sector to participate in the waterfront in general, and East Bayfront in particular. . . . It's not just about hardware. We don't only want to put in the plumbing. We want to drive the applications -- e-health, e-learning, e-commerce -- to create an intelligent community."
But while highly wired, the West Don Lands and the East Bayfront projects are not expected to be highly expensive for consumers. It's all good for them, in Mr. Campbell's view, that the private-sector-driven residential developments on the revitalized waterfronts of Sydney and Melbourne are commanding $1,000 to $2,000 a square foot. "It boggles the mind, but it's not what we're trying to achieve here. We want a waterfront not just for those who can afford to jet in and have it as an exclusive area. One of our core mandates is to return the waterfront to the people."
Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corp.'s "Quay to the city: Summer '06" runs from Aug. 11 to 20.
AoD