Toronto Grand Park Village | 133m | 40s | Minto Group | Wallman Architects

steveintoronto said:
Smaller cities than Toronto in the UK have done this, US cities have done it (some smaller than Toronto) I can't see why such visions are so alien here?
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Well people here are used to living with diesel driven trains, overhead wires, city parks that are not maintained, and a city that's always broke
i can see why people have no hope on big government projects
 
Since when have I used only the Hudson Yards as a comparator? In the UK, partial to full decking has been used for over a century. Many parts of London exist above present rail lines. London is hardly alone. Many (and I repeat, since some aren't paying attention) *smaller* cities around the world do at least partial decking to not only reclaim area, but to suppress noise.

Note yet again, that the area I suggest for *partial decking* is the RER. ADRM gets it. The City doesn't, even as Tory promotes SmartTrack (electric). The yard expansion is for *electric* trains.
Mayor Tory’s vote to build townhomes next to rail yard threatens SmartTrack plans


By supporting a push from Etobicoke councillors, Tory voted for changes to land use that could challenge expansion plans for GO transit and his own heavy-rail SmartTrack ambitions.

By Jennifer PagliaroCity Hall reporter
Thu., June 9, 2016

Mayor John Tory voted in favour of allowing residential homes to be built next to a GO Transit maintenance yard at the urging of allied Etobicoke councillors, ignoring the chief planner’s warning that the move threatens the mayor’s own signature SmartTrack transit plans.

Both senior city staff and officials from the provincial transit arm Metrolinx warned council that changes to allow residential development on a sliver of employment lands (zoned for industrial, commercial and institutional use) next to the rail facility in south Etobicoke would affect provincial plans for expanded, electrified GO service known as Regional Express Rail (RER).

Those expansion plans are directly linked to Tory’s own chief campaign promise to create a localized heavy-rail service using existing GO rail tracks, with additional stations in Toronto, which he calls SmartTrack.

“The Willowbrook yard is a critical, critical facility for delivering on RER and SmartTrack,” the city’s chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat told council Wednesday. “In the absence of the opportunity to expand that facility, it is very difficult to, in fact, expand the transit uses along our heavy rail corridors in the region.”

The mayor’s spokesperson Amanda Galbraith said Metrolinx is in the process of purchasing lands along the rail corridor and that the decision by council “allows the city to look at all options on how to best use land near our rail corridors.” [...]
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https://www.thestar.com/news/city_h...-to-rail-yard-threatens-smarttrack-plans.html

Next we'll be having comments on how the subway shouldn't be decked over in open cuts, oblivious to the history of Summerhill north to St Clair and other instances.

My God, this city is stuck in the last century. And even diesel and *steam* sections were covered over in other cities!

Built 80 years ago: Earlscourt Exhibition Centre
[...]
The 4.5 hectare structure straddles the curving tracks of London Underground's District and Piccadilly Lines — 61m of rail lines in all. No load from the superstructure was allowed to impinge on the tunnels or track works. The large and complex foundations comprise heavily reinforced concrete beams supported on irregularly spaced columns with portal girders spanning the tracks.
One concrete beam, spanning the line to Putney, is 30m long, over 5m wide and 3m deep. It is reinforced with 336 steel bars of 50mm diameter and carries column loads of 2,030 and 2,134 tonnes in addition to its self-weight of 1,016 tonnes. [...]
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http://www.engineering-timelines.com/scripts/engineeringItem.asp?id=894

This isn't rocket-science folks...there were sections of land extending over areas of track in Toronto's rail-lands for close to a century.
 
Ok, so let's pretend that council votes to deck over the tracks here. Can you briefly break down the funding structure? Nothing too detailed, just estimate how much it would cost and how we would cover it.
 
"Here" being the Judson St land now extant:

Metrolinx wins OMB appeal against City (it's a given, and failing that, expropriation. MX has already offered to buy the land, all detailed in another string (three actually) at this site).

Metrolinx is favoured by the locals over over developers, locals know that a "buffer" is essential to abating noise issues. MX favours intensification around stations, is clearly on record as stating that.

MX needs to expand the present railyard northward to cater to/maintain the RER/SmartTrack fleet. This will be noisy. MX realize this, as depositions show, and want to be good neighbours. So they put in the newer tracks at below grade (as to how much is an engineering issue, the ramp into/out-of can't be too steep, but matching the gradient at the Bathurst St Yards underpass is a good bet)

MX build their new maintenance buildings and track leads at below grade and of a building strength that can support a grass canopy (not hard to do). In open track areas, free-standing decking is erected, with a footing and strength suffice to put commercial buildings above to act as a further sound barrier, and park area up to those. A good amount of funding comes from MX, who retain the "air rights" above their decking. Initial cost of decking is recouped later by the commercial building erected above the decking. This, a levy on local high-rise development and some Parks Dep't allocation goes towards the open park area created.

I'm not going to bandy "dollar figures"...just point to the myriad of times this has been done in other cities. Park Avenue, some of the most expensive real estate in the world, is built over a four-track trench. London, Paris, Berlin, etc, etc have done this. I'll state this *yet again*: PARTIAL decking! Not anywhere near the whole yard, just over the *necessary and inevitable expansion* for the electric stock.

Who financed the decking over of the Yonge Line north of Summerhill? And that was fifty years ago, albeit some stretched into later years. The TTC is sitting on a goldmine as per 'air-rights'.

Posters are pointing out the height (and thus density) of "Grand Park Village". Take a look at aerial shots, and try and tell me it's due to 'lack of available space'. There's lots of space. Other cities (some smaller and far less well-off than Toronto) who've already done projects to re-use existing railyards in creative ways.

Perhaps the rules of vision are much more onerous here....?
 
No one's really disputing the technical feasibility of a decking project here, but the question that is - and should be - asked is "why here?" This is nowhere close to downtown, there aren't really any broader densification pressures around it and aren't likely to be in our lifetimes, and there are myriad instances across the city where this makes more sense to pursue.

There's simply not a convincing set of reasons to pursue a decking project here, regardless of the fact that it is conceivably possible.
 
ADRM said:
There's simply not a convincing set of reasons to pursue a decking project here, regardless of the fact that it is conceivably possible.
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The community disagrees, and so does Planning.

It's termed "Noise". And also the *existing* community, let alone added pressure from the new development, want more park space. Even if it isn't park space, the disputed rezoning of the land from industrial/commercial to multi-use means that MX can acquire that land and stone two birds with one kill.
 
The noise is coming from the current use on the site. You don't need a park deck to get rid of the noise, you just need to change the use to something quieter. A rail yard, especially for electric vehicles, would be pretty quiet, and any remaining noise could be dealt with by a noise wall.

Next, while I agree with @ADRM that there is nowhere near the intensity of land use here that would be required to pay for decking over a yard expansion, I am questioning the technical feasibility of a decking project here. The rail crossover between Bathurst and Spadina has a half kilometre worth of inclined track on either side of it: there's less than 200 metres here before you get to Royal York and Mimico GO Station. Where would you put the inclined track?

Still, the question remains, why even worry about this here, and in this thread for a project to the east of Royal York? The City has a park it wants to develop—Grand Park—much closer to this site, and a greenway that it intends to build which will lead to it. No doubt contributions from this site and from 39 Newcastle will flow to Grand Park and the Greenway.

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You obviously haven't been reading the reports from Metrolinx themselves, let alone community groups, or the hours of testimony at City Hall on this. I watched two hours plus of the Youtube footage. Much of the discussion revolved around the phrase "rail yard" as opposed to "Maintenance Facility". That may sound trivial, but has immense bearing on Metrolinx' and the community's concerns. MX can address the *existing* concerns somewhat by improving the buffer, not just maintaining one, from the edge of the yard to present residences. The Grand Park projects will also be affected by noise, as it travels more easily vertically than horizontally, albeit the more easterly and northerly will be shaded from it.

City Planning have made their stance against residential on the Judson sector clear to the point that:
[...]
Councillor Gord Perks said that the mayor and his allies “made a terrible, terrible mistake. And now we’re going to have to waste public money fighting each other about it.”

Because city staff are already on record as opposing council’s decision, the city would have to hire outside planners to support its case at the OMB, which would increase legal costs, Perks said. He added that it’s possible Metrolinx could subpoena the city’s own planners to make the agency’s case.

“This is one of the dumbest planning decisions I’ve seen in my career,” he said.

In a Marchreport to the planning and growth management committee, staff said keeping the Judson lands’ employment designation was important to “protect and support existing operations and future expansion opportunities” at the rail yard.

But at a May meeting of the planning committee, Etobicoke-Lakeshore Councillor Justin Di Ciano moved a motion — which was approved the next month by council — to designate the lands for mixed use.

As first reported by CBC, a company named Dunpar Developments has applied to build 72 townhomes and lowrise commercial buildings at the site, which is not in Di Ciano’s ward.

Metrolinx’s notice of appeal charges that “no public consultation had taken place prior to this change” at committee, and because Di Ciano moved his motion from the floor it didn’t appear on a public agenda beforehand.[...]
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https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/20...-of-toronto-over-etobicoke-rezoning-vote.html

Noise walls will help those at grade to the facility, they won't help those above it. Redevelopment on the south side of the tracks was permitted by a faulty report that kept referring to a "rail yard". This yard is way beyond just storage, and will be even more intense for noise when the the new maintenance facility is built even closer to Judson St.

I'm confident these issues will be aired in a new light in the coming OMB appeal by Metrolinx...supported, btw, but the present locals:
https://www.facebook.com/judsonstreetmimico/?rc=p
 
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Well, that's a lot of superfluous information in the Grand Park Village thread.

No one, no one, no one is debating with you over putting houses on the Judson site. We all know that's dumb. Move on. Please, no more in this thread that's not related to Grand Park Village.

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OK, so you feel the park space available in Grand Park is suffice for the density proposed? And how about noise from the Willowbrook Yards affecting the proposed development?
 
I'm not in a position to assess the total park needs of the new residents in the proposals east of Royal York Road, and I also don't know whether Freed and Dunpar will get all of the density that they're looking for here yet, but Grand Avenue Park looks fairly big to me, and again, so much closer to these proposals that I feel any park space on Judson would be pretty much irrelevant to them, other than maybe for the On The GO residents.

In regards to noise from Willowbrook? The residents east of Royal York won't hear any of it. They'll only hear Mimico GO station related noise, and that wouldn't change unless Metrolinx got up the nerve to build a mixed use development on top of the station (and we know that's not their modus operandi).

Here's a quick map on top of a Google base of how everything lines up here:

Grand Park Proposals.jpg


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DSC said:
This building ...
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Trying to track any news coverage on that now before commenting, certainly not the first time that's happened in Toronto. (Happens a lot with trees) Perhaps it's time for a bylaw amendment to put a hold on demolitions once it's on Council's itinerary for consideration?

That's a pretty dirty move on Freed's part and I hope it poisons their getting the height and density approval they were looking for.
 
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