Toronto Sherbourne Common, Canada's Sugar Beach, and the Water's Edge Promenade | ?m | ?s | Waterfront Toronto | Teeple Architects

Mrs. RRR and I met for lunch at Against the Grain today, and were highly entertained by Redpath's supply ship being backed out of the slip by a couple of spiffy little tugboats. For fun value alone, the sugar shack needs to stay!

Tremendous amount of construction going on around Corus and along QQ (Waterlink, road/sewage work/GBC) and yet the deck and promenade were sunny and peaceful (except for the odd loud bang from GBC!). So, here's one thing that the horizontal blocking of Corus does -- it protects the promenade from the north wind when it blows, and the noise of cars on QQ and the Gardiner.

I must say I envy the Health Sciences GBC crowd -- I almost want to become an X-ray tech or some such just to have a chance to go to school in such a lovely location.
 
RRR, what did you think of Against the Grain? We went there a couple of weeks ago (remember when the weather was good? :)) and had crappy service. The location is lovely, the ambiance is great, but when I have to wait 45 minutes to get my drink order I get miffed. Seriously, how long does it take to open a beer?
 
PinkLucy said:
RRR, what did you think of Against the Grain? We went there a couple of weeks ago (remember when the weather was good? :)) and had crappy service. The location is lovely, the ambiance is great, but when I have to wait 45 minutes to get my drink order I get miffed. Seriously, how long does it take to open a beer?
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We've been 3-4 times, and I don't remember it as being really slow, but the Mrs. agrees with you. She said about the same -- how long does it take to pour a pint? I was ship watching and avoiding work, so slow was working for me today.

45 minutes is insane. I'd be storming the bar.
 
Cool! Thanks a lot! You sir have given me an excuse to venture on up. Now the hard part... convincing my parents to drive/take a go bus with friends all the way from Meadowvale, Mississauga to the East Bayfront. Wish me luck
 
I hate that the park is cut in half by queen's quay

Why does Toronto always do things half-assed?????? The fact that Queen's Quay Blvd bisects the park in half is shameful. Where is the big vision????

A true "Commons" would not have a busy road running right through the heart of it!

For the extra money to actually bury or partially bury this small streth of road would ahve resulted in a fantastic larger park and a TRUE "Commons"

I am embarrassed by this one huge error in judgment - otherwise the space is wonderful but it could of, and should of been one large connected parcel.

Toronto is great in a lot of ways but it is full of could ofs and should ofs!!!!!
 
How is a park that is divided into two not a "true" commons? Furthermore, it wasn't like a) QQE is so incredibly busy and b) that there are no precedent of urban parks that are bisected by a roadway. If there is money floating around to bury that stretch of QQE, I'd much rather spend it on the more problematic Lakeshore Blvd and Gardiner instead (vis-a-vis High Park, for example).

AoD
 
iluvtoronto said:
Why does Toronto always do things half-assed?????? The fact that Queen's Quay Blvd bisects the park in half is shameful. Where is the big vision????

A true "Commons" would not have a busy road running right through the heart of it!

For the extra money to actually bury or partially bury this small streth of road would ahve resulted in a fantastic larger park and a TRUE "Commons"

I am embarrassed by this one huge error in judgment - otherwise the space is wonderful but it could of, and should of been one large connected parcel.

Toronto is great in a lot of ways but it is full of could ofs and should ofs!!!!!
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Yeah, no kidding. Just look how roads like 65th and 79th ruin Central Park!

In all seriousness, once (if?) QQE is remade to feature proper transit and landscaping, it will actually add to the park in my opinion. QQE isn't much of an auto throughfare and the street life (likely mainly pedestrians, cyclists, transit users) will add to the area. Burying it would be needlessly expensive and may not accomplish much good at all.
 
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iluvtoronto said:
Why does Toronto always do things half-assed?????? The fact that Queen's Quay Blvd bisects the park in half is shameful. Where is the big vision????

A true "Commons" would not have a busy road running right through the heart of it!

For the extra money to actually bury or partially bury this small streth of road would ahve resulted in a fantastic larger park and a TRUE "Commons"

I am embarrassed by this one huge error in judgment - otherwise the space is wonderful but it could of, and should of been one large connected parcel.

Toronto is great in a lot of ways but it is full of could ofs and should ofs!!!!!
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We are talking about Toronto, right? I think you might need to adjust your expectations just a tad.
 
The two parts of SC are actually quite different and having the two sections separated by a road is hardly the end of the world. It will be better when they finally install the traffic lights. Putting a section of QQE underground would be very expensive due to Lake Ontario being right there and I would far rather see $$ spent on the long-promised LRT on QQE.
 
Personally I've been to against the grain three times, during super busy hours on a Saturday afternoon with full sun and cool breeze, and during hours of half the house an closing times. I have always received good service although a little on the slow side, the wait staff can't be blamed for the buffoonery of placing the bar as physically far away as possible from outside. Outside of somewhat lax service as a person who enjoys a very wide variety of beer this is definately one of the better places in Toronto for beer selection especially with location and prices, with pints of I&G going for 6.50$ its at least a buck cheaper than anywhere else with I&G on tap that I've seen.
 
Well in truth the logistics of putting a road underground in that part of town can be rather tricky, you see all the land there is infill and can be unstable not to mention seriously permeable. with the lake right there it just about triples the price of the build with all the extra infrastructure and skilled labour and materials needed to make sure it doesn't collapse on itself in one ugly case of liquifaction. The one other very good reason is that just north of the commons and the area where the infill started there is one of Torontos dozens of underground streams, an awful lot of the storm water and run off in the area goes into it and that in due course goes into the Sherbourne commons biggest feature being the water treatment. that big silver building is primarily for water, and when it comes down those large concrete metal mesh thingy's and along the large aggregate algae covered pools it is demonstrably cleaner than ifit were being allowed to flow right into the harbour.

Hope that answers your question.

In other thinking it might have been a good move to have the road horseshoe up around the park and possibly even on a raised bit of road to create an area that is protected from the elements to put some other park feature near, similar to what they've done in west donlands with the skate park.
 
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From Saturday, May 4th. Photo by me.
 
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