Toronto Love Park | 3m | 1s | City of Toronto | CCxA

Ornamental ponds in local parks are a great feature that you see in many Montreal neighbourhoods like in Outremont's Saint-Viateur Park or Westmount Park in Westmount. There's nothing quite like a park with a pond in an urban setting surrounded by interesting buildings and the vitality of the city. It can add a lot of beauty to a park and have a calming effect that contrasts nicely with the vibrant streets around it.

Plus, a decent-sized park pond will allow people to enjoy quintessential Canadian pastimes like skating and hockey in the winter without having to make a special trip to a rink. Ornamental ponds in local parks can add beauty, recreational opportunities, and year-round vitality. They should be incorporated into more park projects in the city, particularly more compact urban parks surrounded by interesting streetscapes.
 
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Some notes from the WT DRP presentation on Wednesday:

Detailed design + value engineering is nearing completion and the design has remained mostly intact with a few notable compromises. The water feature is still there, but some of the existing mature trees will be removed because they conflicted with parks / solid waste ROW access requirements. There will not be silva cells for the new trees, unfortunately. The perimeter of the pond will be built with fine red tile of varying shades in a sort of pixelated pattern, which is actually surprisingly durable. Walkways are still mostly granite pavers, though there is some poured concrete in places. The bottom of the pond will be filled with a material to discourage wading, either river rock or granite quarry ends (which apparently can be acquired for free as they are considered waste, an important consideration for the materials budget). The pavilion design is still being refined, but it's essentially a trellis of bent metal tubes that will accommodate plants for shade. Some concerns were raised about it being climbable, so the design may change. The glowing heart is still there, but it's been moved off centre. Planting was discussed, but horticulture is not my forté, so I don't remember much about that part, except that the panel seemed to approve and gave the latest designs their unanimous support.
 
junctionist said:
Ornamental ponds in local parks are a great feature that you see in many Montreal neighbourhoods like in Outremont's Saint-Viateur Park or Westmount Park in Westmount. There's nothing quite like a park with a pond in an urban setting surrounded by interesting buildings and the vitality of the city. It can add a lot of beauty to a park and have a calming effect that contrasts nicely with the vibrant streets around it.

Plus, a decent-sized park pond will allow people to enjoy quintessential Canadian pastimes like skating and hockey in the winter without having to make a special trip to a rink. Ornamental ponds in local parks can add beauty, recreational opportunities, and year-round vitality. They should be incorporated into more park projects in the city, particularly more compact urban parks surrounded by interesting streetscapes.
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Worth noting here, the City has many buried streams; some are very polluted, but others are clean-ish; at least enough that they could serve as water supply to such a feature.

Further, such a feature might even clean the water (with aquatic plants); many of these streams are already under city-owned park space.

For instance, Small's Creek, is underneath East Lynn Park on Danforth; and also under Orchard Park on Dundas.

I'm not sure how the pipes are routed at the southern end, but the alignment at Dundas (east of Coxwell) makes it very plausible to route the creek through Woodbine Park and Woodbine Beach.

Likewise Glen Stewart Brook is underneath Ivan Forrest Gardens.

Burke Brook is buried under portions of Alexander Muir Gardens (near Lawrence/Yonge)

There are a host of others, which you can look at at www.lostrivers.ca

Ideally I'd love to see their entirety restored w/natural topography.

But in many cases that is grossly impractical.

However, in others, where the water is reasonably clean, and where it flows under publicly owned greenspace, there's no reason some of that water couldn't see daylight again, and in the process feed a lovely water feature with or without significant current.
 
Presentation from the Dec WTDRP:


I was originally disappointed by cast in place concrete pathways but it seem that they'd be using a version that looks pretty decent, with granite aggregate that gives it a very different feel and colour.
Info: https://www.concretenetwork.com/concrete/exposedaggregate/how_to_expose.html

AoD
 
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So what I noted was that Cormier clearly hates the garbage cans too (City Standard) but couldn't get money to replace them........

Sooooo.


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I'm assuming its a cover treatment (skin) as opposed to a paint job.
 
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Northern Light said:
So what I noted was that Cormier clearly hates the garbage cans too (City Standard) but couldn't get money to replace them........
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If I recall correctly, it's not a budget issue. Corktown Common, as built by WT, actually had much nicer garbage cans. The solid waste department insisted that they be replaced with the ugly plastic design because of the collection equipment they use. So given that the design and dimensions have to remain the same, the only way to change the appearance is with a wrap.
 
smably said:
If I recall correctly, it's not a budget issue. Corktown Common, as built by WT, actually had much nicer garbage cans. The solid waste department insisted that they be replaced with the ugly plastic design because of the collection equipment they use. So given that the design and dimensions have to remain the same, the only way to change the appearance is with a wrap.
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I didn't realize they had forced out the nicer design; that's unacceptable (to me anyway)

It (wraps) are far from the only option; the ugly bins could sit inside a decorative box/encasement that has a front that slides open; this already exists as a format and is widely used.

The City's street bins are really ugly black plastic containers underneath a stainless steel box. Albeit in that case the doors swing open, rather than slide and the interior bins are somewhat different from City Standard.

Obviously, solid waste needs to agree to this; and they need to be made to agree.
 
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Happy New Year! We hope 2020 brings you continued health and happiness.

This is a friendly reminder that the York Street Park public information centre is taking place on the evening of Thursday, January 16 between 6:00-9:00 p.m. in the lobby of 1 York Street. Project team members will be on site to discuss the plans for this new urban oasis on the waterfront. There is no formal presentation during this event; you can drop in any time between these hours to check out presentation boards and talk to the design team directly.

Following your visit, we hope you will join us across the street in the southern portion of the park to check out the LOOP installation (Jan. 15 - Feb. 9) and enjoy our “warming station” activation (Jan. 13 – 17). This station is a repurposed shipping container that gives visitors an opportunity to sit down, warm up with some free hot cocoa, and learn more about other exciting Waterfront Toronto projects.

We encourage you to give some love to the park and these upcoming activities with your networks—feel free to reshare our content!

Waterfront Toronto Twitter

Waterfront Toronto Facebook

Waterfront Toronto Instagram
 
The city announced that they're expected to lose $1B from the pandemic and its shutdown. John Tory said that they’re re-examining capital projects. I fear for this park and the one on Rees, as parks and other recreation are always the easy target when there’s a budget crunch.
 
MetroMan said:
The city announced that they're expected to lose $1B from the pandemic and its shutdown. John Tory said that they’re re-examining capital projects. I fear for this park and the one on Rees, as parks and other recreation are always the easy target when there’s a budget crunch.
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Yeah he is throwing a bunch of doom and gloom at us while this shit is going on, but most likely a lot of these public realm projects will probably be shelved for a couple years...oh well let's hope for the best and that the City don't go bankrupt
 
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