Rail Deck Park (?, ?, ?)

[gibsonm]

I hear you that the city mishandled this. I just question the assumption that development air rights over the rail corridor were available for sale in the first place, but I don’t know what precedents were already set or the exact timing of the two opposing parties’ interest. If ORCA was given approval prior to the RDP proposal, then that does weaken the city’s case substantially.

 

[Civdis]

The only evidence mounting against this park is that the City proposed it with no actual plan to acquire the lands or pay for building it.
As I've said before, I could argue that your current place of residence is absolutely perfect for the City to build a park, but since you live there, you probably would have some concerns if they announced they were doing that.

Everyone's looking for some conspiracy invovling Ford and Metrolinx and the boogeyman and maybe George Soros, for all I know. Like ol' Occam said, the simplest explanatin is probably the correct one:
-CRAFT acquired the site and started planning;
-The City thought they could undercut their plans by announcing their own, completely impractical plan;
-The developers asked to negotiate and the City said no, instead writing some blog posts and producing 2 or 3 renderings and then did nothing else;
-The public largely bought the narrative that the City was trying to "save" the lands from evil developers;
-The developers continued to plan for development on their lands while the City did nothing;
-The developers won at the LPAT and the City issued sad sack press releases about their disappointment that this much-neeeded park -- the plans for which consisted entirely of 2 or 3 renderings, no actual design, no actual legal argument, no actual land ownership and no actual financial plan for the $1b+ cost - would be denied to the citizens of Toronto.

And months later, still people are disappointed that privately owned lands the City effecitvely tried to steal, will be developed in accordance with the legal rights of their owners.

There's no conspiracy here, folks.
It would have been a nice park, if it made sense. It never did.

Not to mention the fact that we will actually see a park built (albeit smaller) in our lifetimes with private money.

 

[tstormers]

Not sure if this is related to this or something else, even though it is in the same location. Very curious if it could be related to the rail deck park in any way? CityPlace is on the Left of the photo, standing on Spadina Bridge.

 

[drum118]

Not sure if this is related to this or something else, even though it is in the same location. Very curious if it could be related to the rail deck park in any way? CityPlace is on the Left of the photo, standing on Spadina Bridge.

View attachment 340427

New power plant building to replace the one to the west and meet the future demands like the other ones being built in the east.

This was to be the new GO Station area.

 

[tstormers]

Thank you, @drum118

 

[karledice]

People in Toronto are trying to save Rail Deck Park from becoming condos

Sign the petition! https://www.change.org/p/sign-this-petition-if-you-want-to-save-rail-deck-park

 

[EastYorkTTCFan]

People in Toronto are trying to save Rail Deck Park from becoming condos

Sign the petition! https://www.change.org/p/sign-this-petition-if-you-want-to-save-rail-deck-park

Unfortunately that isn't going to do anything an online partition can be signed by anyone with no way of knowing if they are a real person plus they typically get ignored.

 

[EnviroTO]

Where is this park? I can't believe they would bulldoze a park in this city and turn it into condos. Any pictures? How many trees are going to be lost and are there any sensitive habitats?

 

[Undead]

Where is this park?

In John Tory's imagination

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

People in Toronto are trying to save Rail Deck Park from becoming condos

Sign the petition! https://www.change.org/p/sign-this-petition-if-you-want-to-save-rail-deck-park

Fixed it:
"People in Toronto are Urging the City to spend Hundreds of Millions of Taxpayer Dollars to Seize Private Property and then Find Another $2B of Taxpayer Funds in Order to Build a Park, Over The Course of the Next 20 Years, Give or Take."

 

[ciceror]

People in Toronto are trying to save Rail Deck Park from becoming condos

Sign the petition! https://www.change.org/p/sign-this-petition-if-you-want-to-save-rail-deck-park

Is advertisement for something that is inherently a political issue allowed on this sub?

 

[karledice]

Is advertisement for something that is inherently a political issue allowed on this sub?

It's not an advertisement, it's an article on Blogto with the link
It's not a political issue, people like parks, if you want the park sign it, if you don't want the park just move along and ignore

 

[EnviroTO]

Ok, so it is a petition to save the dream of a park by leaving a site undeveloped and looking like an industrial railyard in the middle of the city in perpetuity. A park which, if made a reality, would be incredibly expensive even if it was only grass. Why not let them build the condos, and if some day the city actually has the money and we want to build the park we can expropriate?

 

[TRONto]

Ok, so it is a petition to save the dream of a park by leaving a site undeveloped and looking like an industrial railyard in the middle of the city in perpetuity. A park which, if made a reality, would be incredibly expensive even if it was only grass. Why not let them build the condos, and if some day the city actually has the money and we want to build the park we can expropriate?

Yes. There is also the areas to the west and east to build a rail deck park. How about we build there instead?

 

[SaugeenJunction]

Ok, so it is a petition to save the dream of a park by leaving a site undeveloped and looking like an industrial railyard in the middle of the city in perpetuity. A park which, if made a reality, would be incredibly expensive even if it was only grass. Why not let them build the condos, and if some day the city actually has the money and we want to build the park we can expropriate?

If the City expropriated, they’d have to pay highest and best use value. Because ORCA won at LPAT, that highest and best use price is probably now approaching the high hundreds of millions if not close to a billion.