Toronto June Callwood Park | ?m | ?s | City of Toronto | gh3
- Thread starter ProjectEnd
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allengeorge
Senior Member
Wow. That does look particularly desolate.
spaced
Active Member
They should leave those fences up and call it a dog park. It'd be packed. 
christiesplits
Senior Member
One of the worst executed Toronto parks in memory.
AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
Right up there with Lisgar - and this one is a higher profile failure. That smoker chewed-bubblegum pink is just icing on this cake.
AoD
Northern Light
Superstar
condovo
Senior Member
Botch it once, shame on you
Botch it twice, shame on me/us
innsertnamehere
Superstar
Lisgar has also similarly had improvements which helped a bit but was ultimately still lipstick on a pig..
Jacob Lisgar
New Member
This would be slightly excusable if the city was broke and was working on a tight budget, but to spend TOP $$$ of design, construction, redesign and reconstruction and end up with a public space that repulses human activity is a scandal. Local councillor and city staff who have been at it for decades with zero vision. No one will have to answer for this, they will just keep spending money. The parks department really needs some new blood.
DSC
Superstar
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There are good people at PFR, look at the really great redesigns for Berczy. St James and Queen's Parks. God knows what happened here, twice!
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irishboy
New Member
The fence surrounding this park came down recently and it’s finally open again. I don’t really recall what this looked like before the renovation but I know it was not well liked or used.
I still say this is not appealing or what I would want in a park but will admit I did see some people using it when i walked past….so it must be an improvement over what was there before. Albeit, however small.
Since this is probably not a park most people want to travel to visit (haha), figured i would share a few pics.
looking south from Fort York:
the kids area actually did seem nice and it was cool to see kids playing on it.
this section is fairly large and open. no grass to sit on, no trees for shade.
they did have lots of seating tho. many different kinds of benches.
i am not sure but looks like there is a water feature? Maybe it always had one but definitely seems to be one now.
Not sure how much money was spent here (both times!!) but seems like they made some improvements but this park could have been so much better. It actually quite a large area and had so much potential.
I still say this is not appealing or what I would want in a park but will admit I did see some people using it when i walked past….so it must be an improvement over what was there before. Albeit, however small.
Since this is probably not a park most people want to travel to visit (haha), figured i would share a few pics.
looking south from Fort York:
the kids area actually did seem nice and it was cool to see kids playing on it.
this section is fairly large and open. no grass to sit on, no trees for shade.
they did have lots of seating tho. many different kinds of benches.
i am not sure but looks like there is a water feature? Maybe it always had one but definitely seems to be one now.
Not sure how much money was spent here (both times!!) but seems like they made some improvements but this park could have been so much better. It actually quite a large area and had so much potential.
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Doesn’t look like a whole lot of improvements. And there was always a water feature. How well it worked is another matter.
UtakataNoAnnex
Senior Member
Was there any reason for designing this park the way they did originally? I mean, it looks well intentioned from an artistic point of view...but for functionality, reality and maintenance it fell obviously flat.
condovo
Senior Member
Glad there's plenty of seating but those standard-issue, ersatz-traditional park benches are completely wrong for the park aesthetically.
The park is still a fail. Hopefully, in a decade or so, it'll be ripped up completely and replaced with something better.
The park is still a fail. Hopefully, in a decade or so, it'll be ripped up completely and replaced with something better.
Northern Light
Superstar
For what the Park looked like before; see the thrashing I gave it over in the Problematic Park Design thread, here:
Problematic Park Design - Why Some Parks Don't Work
A few forumers have expressed an interest in a thread about why some parks don't work. So I thought I would start one with some examples and show what can go wrong from the subtle to the obvious. **** A few words on me; and on some terms/ideas discussed below. I am not a Landscape Architect...
****
I'll have to see the re-do in person to be fair............but.........
My quick impression is that they cleaned it up some, repaired a few things, but left a fundamentally flawed and in my judgement irreparable concept in place.
Key problems remain, including uneven surfaces, and pooling of water (intentional) which results in extremely unsafe, icy surfaces in winter.
It feels like a make-do fix, rather than what is needed here, which is tabula rasa.