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From the Globe:
A contender on the waterfront
Toronto has been beating itself up over Harbourfront, but it ain't so bad after all
By JOHN BENTLEY MAYS
Friday, March 19, 2004 - Page G2
During its most recent round of public consultations, Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corp. (TWRC) asked participants to name their worst nightmare about the future of the inner harbour's undeveloped eastern stretch. Topping the list of horrible scenarios was another Harbourfront.
No surprise there. Harbourfront, which stretches west along Queens Quay from Yonge Street to Stadium Road, has long been the most hated downtown residential megadevelopment in Canada.
Architectural critics and other opinion-providers repeatedly damn Harbourfront for cruelly blocking off Toronto's view of Lake Ontario, ridicule it as so much stupid urban design thrown up by get-rich-quick real estate developers, condemn it for hogging what could be a paradise of waterfront parkland.
While the mere mention of Harbourfront at the TWRC meeting was enough to make everyone diss it without a second thought, I was left with a disquieting question. Is this large neighbourhood of condominium and rental towers and parking lots and waterfront parks, where many people freely choose to live, really something we can just write off as an urban disaster and never look at again?
I had not cast a careful glance toward Harbourfront in years. Which isn't to say I had stayed clean away. The Power Plant, Toronto's largest public gallery of contemporary international art, has for many years been a favourite destination on my cultural map of the city. I have occasionally shopped and lunched at the revamped Terminal Building. But I had never struck out west along Queens Quay, away from Harbourfront Centre -- the cultural and commercial heart of the district -- into the territory of the tall buildings.
When I did so, one bright, breezy afternoon last weekend, I was struck by what a disaster Harbourfront isn't. Some of the towers and low-rise projects scattered or clustered along Queens Quay are bland and thoughtless, designed with no respect for the waterfront location or their hard, urban site on old port industrial lands. King's Landing, a playfully light, bright apartment block designed by architect Arthur Erickson in 1982, is an exception celebrated by many critics.
But in the 20-odd years since King's Landing, the quality of Harbourfront's residential architecture has stayed okay-to-good, and the buildings have frequently tried to get off some stylistic flourishes: gleaming swankiness at 401 Queens Quay West, for example, and a kind of surf-'n'-sun frothiness at 600 Queens Quay West.
The entire architectural tone of the neighbourhood will get a jolt, by the way, when the renovation of the jubilantly deco Tip Top Tailors building is complete, and the towers start to rise south of Fort York. If the building design at Harbourfront leaves something to be desired, the basic idea of the place appears to working well enough.
Contrary to the most frequent slander against the development, the buildings of Harbourfront are not "walls" separating the citizenry from our aquatic birthright. They are homes for thousands of families, and physical extensions of city life into land left desolate when the port declined. These stacks of homes provide the real, human connections between Toronto and the water.
Harbourfront is also far more than a lot of big residential buildings. The Music Garden is one of the loveliest public parks in the city, and the little patch of wetlands is one of the most charming. The waterside promenade offers deeply private walks only a few steps away from the hectic intersections of the financial district. In the near future, the city will be pressing on to replace the last parking lots in the neighbourhood with parks, and creating a network of green spaces to complement the hard-edged architecture.
Even then, however, Harbourfront won't be living up to its potential as a great urban place until something is done to invigorate Queens Quay West. At present, the district's wide central thoroughfare is good for cars but daunting for pedestrians. Among other easy, inexpensive solutions that could be tried: The abolition of the dedicated bicycle lanes along the Quay, and permission for on-street parking.
Before bikers yelp in protest, I should add that having bike riders and motorists share a roadway urges courtesy and caution on all users. It's just good citizenship.
And while we are on the subject of citizens, strollers on sidewalks have rights as well.
Pedestrians (hence retail shopping) tend to shun wide-open roadways.
The future of Harbourfront as a vital urban neighbourhood very largely hinges on the tightening and slowing of all vehicular traffic on Queens Quay, and fresh encouragement (like shops and restaurants and other big-city amenities) for people to come out of those apartment buildings and walk abroad on Toronto's sunniest downtown street.
jmays@globeandmail.ca
A contender on the waterfront
Toronto has been beating itself up over Harbourfront, but it ain't so bad after all
By JOHN BENTLEY MAYS
Friday, March 19, 2004 - Page G2
During its most recent round of public consultations, Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corp. (TWRC) asked participants to name their worst nightmare about the future of the inner harbour's undeveloped eastern stretch. Topping the list of horrible scenarios was another Harbourfront.
No surprise there. Harbourfront, which stretches west along Queens Quay from Yonge Street to Stadium Road, has long been the most hated downtown residential megadevelopment in Canada.
Architectural critics and other opinion-providers repeatedly damn Harbourfront for cruelly blocking off Toronto's view of Lake Ontario, ridicule it as so much stupid urban design thrown up by get-rich-quick real estate developers, condemn it for hogging what could be a paradise of waterfront parkland.
While the mere mention of Harbourfront at the TWRC meeting was enough to make everyone diss it without a second thought, I was left with a disquieting question. Is this large neighbourhood of condominium and rental towers and parking lots and waterfront parks, where many people freely choose to live, really something we can just write off as an urban disaster and never look at again?
I had not cast a careful glance toward Harbourfront in years. Which isn't to say I had stayed clean away. The Power Plant, Toronto's largest public gallery of contemporary international art, has for many years been a favourite destination on my cultural map of the city. I have occasionally shopped and lunched at the revamped Terminal Building. But I had never struck out west along Queens Quay, away from Harbourfront Centre -- the cultural and commercial heart of the district -- into the territory of the tall buildings.
When I did so, one bright, breezy afternoon last weekend, I was struck by what a disaster Harbourfront isn't. Some of the towers and low-rise projects scattered or clustered along Queens Quay are bland and thoughtless, designed with no respect for the waterfront location or their hard, urban site on old port industrial lands. King's Landing, a playfully light, bright apartment block designed by architect Arthur Erickson in 1982, is an exception celebrated by many critics.
But in the 20-odd years since King's Landing, the quality of Harbourfront's residential architecture has stayed okay-to-good, and the buildings have frequently tried to get off some stylistic flourishes: gleaming swankiness at 401 Queens Quay West, for example, and a kind of surf-'n'-sun frothiness at 600 Queens Quay West.
The entire architectural tone of the neighbourhood will get a jolt, by the way, when the renovation of the jubilantly deco Tip Top Tailors building is complete, and the towers start to rise south of Fort York. If the building design at Harbourfront leaves something to be desired, the basic idea of the place appears to working well enough.
Contrary to the most frequent slander against the development, the buildings of Harbourfront are not "walls" separating the citizenry from our aquatic birthright. They are homes for thousands of families, and physical extensions of city life into land left desolate when the port declined. These stacks of homes provide the real, human connections between Toronto and the water.
Harbourfront is also far more than a lot of big residential buildings. The Music Garden is one of the loveliest public parks in the city, and the little patch of wetlands is one of the most charming. The waterside promenade offers deeply private walks only a few steps away from the hectic intersections of the financial district. In the near future, the city will be pressing on to replace the last parking lots in the neighbourhood with parks, and creating a network of green spaces to complement the hard-edged architecture.
Even then, however, Harbourfront won't be living up to its potential as a great urban place until something is done to invigorate Queens Quay West. At present, the district's wide central thoroughfare is good for cars but daunting for pedestrians. Among other easy, inexpensive solutions that could be tried: The abolition of the dedicated bicycle lanes along the Quay, and permission for on-street parking.
Before bikers yelp in protest, I should add that having bike riders and motorists share a roadway urges courtesy and caution on all users. It's just good citizenship.
And while we are on the subject of citizens, strollers on sidewalks have rights as well.
Pedestrians (hence retail shopping) tend to shun wide-open roadways.
The future of Harbourfront as a vital urban neighbourhood very largely hinges on the tightening and slowing of all vehicular traffic on Queens Quay, and fresh encouragement (like shops and restaurants and other big-city amenities) for people to come out of those apartment buildings and walk abroad on Toronto's sunniest downtown street.
jmays@globeandmail.ca