TRONto
Active Member
I believe Blue Jay's way to the Skydome park area is to be part of the MCC redevelopment and then there is nothing until CIBC Square. That's the plan as I understand it.
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Rail Deck Park (?, ?, ?)
- Thread starter DSC
- Start date
TRONto
Active Member
It's all private sector if they go ahead with the condos. No taxpayer money
TRONto
Active Member
By the time they start to sell it'll be at least $2K psf!^The $1,500 psf sale prices will foot the bill
TossYourJacket
Senior Member
What a massive disappointment
syn
Senior Member
I couldn't help but think the same thing.
The city still has some power here to shape the proposal and end up with something that could be a big win for all involved.
Mercenary
Active Member
Typical Toronto cycle of thinking.
A Grand vision is proposed. Everyone gets excited
Then its scaled down. Everyone is bitter about it
Then people accept it that its better than nothing.
Mediocre things are then built.
People then complain why Toronto is not world class.
And cycle repeats itself.
If you want to truly enjoy a great park over Rail Tracks, best to go to Chicago and check out the Millennium Park.
Toronto will never built anything close to that.
ciceror
Active Member
TossYourJacket
Senior Member
Small parks are not the same as large parks in terms of programming. You can't put a sports field in a parkette, for example. But sure, everyone downtown should be so thankful we get way less parkland than the suburbs because lol people in apartments are less valuable humans than homeowners.
Also, that image is old. The eastern third of Canoe Landing Park is now a school and community centre, claiming it's a park is disingenuous.
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TRONto
Active Member
“The City has also not taken any substantive steps over the last almost 5 years since then to negotiate the purchase of the CRAFT Property - or to commence expropriation proceedings to acquire it,” the panel said in its decision. “Thus, little has happened since 2016 with respect to the actual creation of Rail Deck Park.”
"Last year, CRAFT President Robert Sabato sent Toronto councillors a letter in which he offered to sell the air rights needed to build Rail Deck Park for $340 million, lease the rights for $25 million per year or allow expropriation of the rights at a price set by city real estate agency CreateTO."
Looks like Rail Deck was not a priority. So it may be considered vaporware?
"Last year, CRAFT President Robert Sabato sent Toronto councillors a letter in which he offered to sell the air rights needed to build Rail Deck Park for $340 million, lease the rights for $25 million per year or allow expropriation of the rights at a price set by city real estate agency CreateTO."
Looks like Rail Deck was not a priority. So it may be considered vaporware?
crs1026
Superstar
Not at all. It’s likely a case of somebody (in ths case Tory) looking at his lawyers and muttering “you said this was a slam dunk....what now?”
I’m sure there will be another round of negotiations.
- Paul
Wahed
New Member
There are far cheaper ways to get a large park than building over the rail corridor. The structure alone to do this is a billion dollar plus capital expenditure. If the City was serious about parkland downtown they would explore alternatives such as acquiring land downtown that could be more cheaply converted to park space. Yes buying land is expensive, but no where near the cost of building a structure over the railway. To my knowledge no such study of comparing alternatives exists. This further suggests the City was never really serious about this half baked idea.
daptive
Active Member
While I generally agree that buying land for a park is cheaper than building over rails, it has to be said that location and size of the park are key factors. And there isn’t a piece of land in the neighbourhood you can buy that can match the size of Rail Deck.
It would be nice for the core to get a park like Riverdale, High Park, or just to add a second Trinity Bellwoods or Christie Pitts. We’ve seen how busy these large parks can get, especially nowadays, there’s clear demand/need for them.
Having said that, it’s not like this proposal isn’t gonna include a park, I just feel like it’s watering down a once in a generation opportunity to really develop something that’s going to be hugely impactful for everyone on the area. We’ve gone from a second Trinity Bellwoods to another Canoe Landing, which… is fine I guess.
crs1026
Superstar
Too many planning decisions in this city are delivered as political photo op packages tied to the political fortunes of one individual or regime. The planners get ignored and their output gets forgotten.
Toronto should have had a well-thought-out, disciplined long-term plan to create open space in the downtown. The core should never have been allowed to develop as it has.... so cavernous, and so little green space. The strategy of banking small amounts of money, but not actually committing any to meaningful amounts of land acquisition, has not served the city well....rather, it has allowed successive councils to avoid making decisions while maintaining that all is well.
The rail deck is a plan of last resort, using the only open space remaining, triggered by the realisation that it is the final opportunity....and at that, only because one politician saw it as an opportunity to advance their own brand.
I would rather see Toronto pay through the nose, and build it at fair market rates, than drop the idea and have a downtown that is that much less liveable. But it’s definitely a cost penalty being paid by the City for lack of having acted sooner. The LPAT ruling is quite reasonable as a reminder to Tory et al that there are no freebies out there.
- Paul
allengeorge
Senior Member
I know it’s a pipe dream, but I’m of the opinion that the money is best spent on a University Ave redo, as per:
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tgam/B5JEPFG4BJBB3EUHF5YY4WT4JY.JPG)
www.theglobeandmail.com
(Note: also a pretty render only, without an actual plan.)
We can also guess that the ORCA proposal will require public money, so maybe part of the parks cash for downtown can go to that as well.
Rebirth of the promenade: A proposal for ‘Canada’s street’ shows what is possible in a post-pandemic world
Post-pandemic cities will need more open space. One landscape architecture firm says we can find it by remaking streets – starting with Toronto’s University Avenue
www.theglobeandmail.com
(Note: also a pretty render only, without an actual plan.)
We can also guess that the ORCA proposal will require public money, so maybe part of the parks cash for downtown can go to that as well.
TJ O'Pootertoot
Senior Member
I've posted this stuff before, I'm sure, but even Wikipedia-level research tells you a bit about what happened in Chicago:
So, Toronto is talking about a project with a starting budget literally 10X what MP started at; and without owning a single square metre of the site.
Also, half their budget came from private donors. Maybe we'd get some of that (we did for Bentway, for example) but that's entirely uncertain.
So, to say this City can't pull off a project of that scale, on land they don't own, that would almost certainly cost $2B-$3B of almost entirely public money... It just doesn't really compare on any level. MP is obviously a nice park and a major Chicago landmark, but to think that's what we were talking about - aside from the superficial aspect of building a park on rail lands - seems dicy to me.
What we should have done is set aside land decades ago, the way NYC set aside Central Park and Chicago set aside its lakeshore; but those are exceptional and unique parks because they were lucky enough to think far ahead. That ship sailed for us long ago.
Clearly the private development isn't as good a park as the park BUT the park was never a real thing that got lost or "watered down."
If I declare I think the block between Bloor and Bathurst and Brunswick and Lowther should be a park, who wouldn't say that's a great place for a park? But it's a neighbourhood. There's already stuff there. The City doesn't own it. They'd have to expropriate it. So saying that isn't "watering down," the park, it's admitting it's a good idea that is obviously totally impractical. Which is another way of saying, it's not a once-in-a-lifetime plan that fell though; and if it is, it fell through a few lifetimes ago.
It'll be less amazing than Raildeck Park (yes, or Millenium Park) but better than Canoe Landing. It'll probably be really cool and something to see and, unlike Raildeck Park, it won't cost you a cent and it will be built in your lifetime.
It's not perfect, but what is?
.