Toronto Queens Quay & Water's Edge Revitalization | ?m | ?s | Waterfront Toronto

nfitz said:
It may well - but Waterfront Toronto's inaction and dithering have lead to an agency that has achieved much less than it could have. Good grief, why haven't they put mechanisms in place to fund Waterfront development from development fees ... just like any other city would have done. Essentially we are building a new chunk of city ... this doesn't cost other cities on the bottom line - some even manage to use development fees to keep taxes low as well!
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I don't think WT can be blamed. They brought out a beautiful plan and wanted to do it all in one phase. The city came up with this cockamamie scheme to break it into two projects. TTC should have said that was impossible last year not now.

It's too bad WT has to go cap in hand to Ford now. But would you really give tax powers to an unelected nonprofit corporation?

If the city won't approve reallocation of funds now, then McGuinty could still make it so. Of course he won't want a fight with Ford before the election.
 
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Jim Flaherty seems enthusiastic about waterfront projects - I hope he's aware of what's happening with this one.
 
Reminder that Waterfront TO was unaware of this impending deadlock until they were contacted by a Torontoist writer.

Unbelievable.
 
grey said:
Reminder that Waterfront TO was unaware of this impending deadlock until they were contacted by a Torontoist writer.

Unbelievable.
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That's actually not true at all, as I stated earlier if you read back a page or two, the province and federal government were well aware that there was this deadlock. I'm pretty sure Waterfront TO is quite aware of what is going on.
 
That's good to know, but it's still unsettling that the person in charge of government relations at WTO didn't know about the report which contained a deadline for this Wednesday (which was actually typo, but still...)
 
grey said:
That's good to know, but it's still unsettling that the person in charge of government relations at WTO didn't know about the report which contained a deadline for this Wednesday (which was actually typo, but still...)
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it seems like there's a bunch of miscommunication between stakeholders on the matter, although to be fair the TTC (even though it is controlled by the city) is not one of them. I get the feeling that the TTC is often left out of the loop like that one clueless cousin at a family dinner.
 
grey said:
That's good to know, but it's still unsettling that the person in charge of government relations at WTO didn't know about the report which contained a deadline for this Wednesday (which was actually typo, but still...)
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Yea I was also dumbfounded by this. Also the illusion that the money can be found elsewhere. Just a couple months ago waterfront Toronto unofficially put this on hold until more funding could be found.

I'm just not sure who to believe at this point.

I'm a very close follower of waterfront Toronto and all its projects. At this point I have very little hope for the following:
- QQ revitalization in any form ... forget about it for the next 5/10 years.
- QQ LRT east extension. Extremely unfortunate but clearly service won't be needed at the levels an LRT can provide for at least 10+ years. So the key here is to see what bus schedule the TTC comes up with.
The big negative is that east bayfront by Hines does not need to go ahead with any office component without this.
 
The TTC and Waterfront Toronto have been meeting for months on this project so WT was well aware of TTC's timing issues. Either their PR person doesn't talk to the staff involved, or they are being disingenuous in letting the TTC take the blame. I think that WT has simply run out of money, though they really aren't being up front with anyone about that. Whether it's because they didn't mind the bank, or whether the costs escalated by trying to please everyone involved, they don't appear to have enough money to do everything they have committed to. So, as taal says, I think you will see them starting to say that this element or that element isn't really needed or can be deferred, and I suspect that QQ East and Cherry St. transit lines will be first to go. I am no expert on the Waterfront plans, but WT certainly seems to be playing their cards close to their chests on this one. I'm not sure anyone outside of a few in that organization really knows what's going on.
 
I don't get what you're saying. It took TTC a year to say that WT's proposed staging was infeasible. How could that not be TTC's fault? WT is not supposed to be self-financing. Of course development charges lag the initial outlays. And this project benefits all Toronto and should be financed by all Toronto. It's just dumb accounting that means it can now be held up by Ford for political reasons.

I think waterfront redev is best thing to happen to Toronto in decades. It was only a matter if time before the politicians noticed and started to spoil it :(.
 
k10ery said:
I don't get what you're saying. It took TTC a year to say that WT's proposed staging was infeasible. How could that not be TTC's fault? WT is not supposed to be self-financing. Of course development charges lag the initial outlays. And this project benefits all Toronto and should be financed by all Toronto. It's just dumb accounting that means it can now be held up by Ford for political reasons.

I think waterfront redev is best thing to happen to Toronto in decades. It was only a matter if time before the politicians noticed and started to spoil it :(.
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What do you mean, the TTC has no problems with any of it. The plan approved by WT involves shifting the tracks a little to the south. The TTC could care less if it gets the money.

Secondoly, regarding the money, no mater what is said in any press release it is NOT a simple issue of an accounting ... there is no money, and no money that is already reserved for future projects cannot easily be transfered to this one. I'm sure that'll be a long and darn out process. For anyone who attended the WT meetings regarding QQ at one point it was clearly states, this is on hold, until funding for the entire length of QQ (i.e. the 2km or so stretch) can be found.
 
I mean the TTC's statement that doing 800m to start is not going to work.

Funding all this project right now with city money would add about $7 million a year to the city's multibillion dollar annual budget. Peanut crumbs! It's not the money, it's the politics.
 
k10ery said:
I mean the TTC's statement that doing 800m to start is not going to work.

Funding all this project right now with city money would add about $7 million a year to the city's multibillion dollar annual budget. Peanut crumbs! It's not the money, it's the politics.
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Okay but that essentially means it's about the money :). Even during Miller's time no one committed concrete funding for this project.
The whole let's do 800m first didn't make much sense to me, also I believe it wasn't only the TTC that had issues with this. But the revitalization has to end somewhere anyway so in that regard doing 800m up front shouldn't matter.

Also I doubt all of the eastern section needs to be done now anyway.

Anyway, I'm expecting nothing will happen here.
 
This is regarding Queen Quay, maybe there's a better thread.

From Steve Munro
Queen’s Quay Streetcar Track Reconstruction

The staff report recommending that the TTC proceed with rebuilding tracks on Queen’s Quay independently of any plans for the street’s reconfiguration is back on the July agenda. I understand that Waterfront Toronto has sorted out its budgeting problems and the full Queen’s Quay project should proceed this fall, but nothing official has come out yet to confirm this.
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http://stevemunro.ca/?p=5376

interesting ...

More from waterfront Toronto (from a poster, can be seen in the above link):
“The 90% Detailed Designs were presented to the Design Review Panel on June 8, 2011 and the project received unanimous approval. The design team is planning to finalize the Detailed Design package and submit it to the City in July. Assuming the Contribution Agreement is signed in the near future, our design schedule will keep pace with the TTC schedule to rebuild the Queens Quay Light Rail Transit.â€
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