Hume gives HTO praise.
I look forward to it, even if some cynics can't be satisfied.
Reclaiming the lake with new HtO waterfront park
Jun 07, 2007 04:30 AM
Christopher Hume
Except for the fact that Lake Ontario is too dirty for swimming, HtO, Toronto's new "urban beach" is the best thing to happen to the waterfront in decades.
This unabashedly man-made facility provides downtown access to the greatest asset this city never had – its location on the edge of one of the largest lakes in the world.
The new space, which opens tomorrow morning at 10, was conceived as an amphitheatre; on one side is the water, on the other, the city. The views of both are dramatic and endlessly fascinating.
Even the Gardiner Expressway becomes strangely engaging as one sits under a yellow umbrella in HtO's enormous sand pit. So near and yet so far, the city carries on its mad routine, while visitors on the beach relax in the middle of it all.
That's the beautiful thing about this place; it doesn't pretend it's something apart from the urban condition in which it exists. Indeed, it revels in the drama of contrasts. The beach, with its boardwalks, benches, berms, trees and lawns, is all about relaxing, enjoying the sunshine, maybe eating a meal and watching kids play in the sand.
Simple in its layout and elegant in design, it is intended to delight.
That's easier said than done, of course, but in this case the creative team – Toronto landscape architect Janet Rosenberg, Montreal paysagiste Claude Cormier and architect Siamak Hariri –has kept things to a minimum. The paving, concrete and brick, weaves around hillocks planted with red maples and willows. The trees aren't as tall as one would like, but they're unusually large by Toronto standards, and fast growing so those of us in middle age may live long enough to see HtO as it was meant to be.
More subtly, the berms shield the beach from the worst excesses of the downtown core and more immediately from Queen's Quay. Located directly south of Rogers Stadium, and the Gardiner, it could have been a noisy and oppressive place . In fact, it's the opposite. The trees are already a factor, and an effective way to soften the harsh features of the metropolis.
Though Lake Ontario remains out of bounds, HtO has an interesting relationship with the water. It brings us to its very edge and functions as a kind of viewing area with the lake as stage. The movements of harbour traffic become positively theatrical in such as setting.
Perhaps the best aspect of HtO, however, is its ability to create the potential for new relationships between the city and its residents. These range from the obvious facts of the vistas to the very idea of Toronto as a waterfront community. This was a fact of urban life back in the days of Sunnyside Amusement Park, but then we forgot where we were. Cars and cottages made the lake irrelevant, and there were so many barriers – the railway, the expressway, industry, condos...
HtO marks a major step in the reclamation of lake, and the possibilities of waterfront living. It also reaffirms the notion of the city as an entity that exists within nature.
No, this is not what a beach looks like in the natural world, but all the elements are here. All it needs now to be complete is people. They will arrive soon enough; by the end of the week, HtO will be a fixed part of Toronto life.