Toronto waterfront

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Toronto Waterfront as seen from the CN Tower (looking south east)

Toronto Waterfront at Humber Bay

The Toronto waterfront is the lakeshore of Lake Ontario in the Municipality of Toronto, Canada. It spans 46 kilometres between the mouth of Etobicoke Creek to the West and the Rouge River in the East. The entire lakeshore has been significantly altered from its natural state prior to European settlement.

1 History
2 Revitalization plans
3 Major issues
4 Timeline
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] History

Foot of Yonge Street in 1910

The shores of Lake Ontario today are mostly landfill and extend up to a couple of kilometres from the original shoreline.

The Ashbridges Bay was filled in and the Portlands area (Cherry St to Leslie St) was created in the early 1900’s. The bay was filled in partly due to concerns about public health – locals had disposed of sewage, farm animal carcasses and household waste in the bay for years.

The Waterfront functioned as an industrial area for many years. Industry began to move out in droves the 1970’s, leaving the public with heavily polluted sites (some of the main uses of the waterfront were oil and coal storage, waste disposal and incineration, and heavy manufacturing).

The first efforts at change were launched in the 1970s and resulted in the construction of some facilities, most notably the Harbourfront Centre. The nearby CN Tower and SkyDome (now Rogers Centre) were also linked to improving the area. These projects, with the exception of the tower, saw massive cost overruns and became heavily criticized.

In 1988 Prime Minister Brian Mulroney called a Royal Commission into the waterfront that was headed by former mayor David Crombie. It reported in 1992 with a detailed, but expensive plan of environmentally sound development. Few of the recommendations were carried out, however, with nothing done by Bob Rae's provincial government of the time or the federal government.

Toronto's bids for the 1996 and 2008 Summer Olympics saw plans for much of the new facilities to be located along the waterfront, with all three levels of government committed to spending a great deal if the games were won, but on both attempts Toronto lost and except for further condominium development at Harbourfront, the waterfront was unchanged.

The recent bid by Toronto for the World's Fair 2015 plans to use waterfront sites to accommodate the fair if the City is successful.

In June 2004, the company Canadian American Transportation Systems (CATS) began regular passenger/vehicle ferry service between Pier 52 and Rochester, New York using the vessel Spirit of Ontario I. The service used a marketing name called "The Breeze". While Rochester had a custom-built ferry terminal, the Toronto terminal was a temporary facility, near the end of Cherry Street for security and customs screening facilities while a permanent marine passenger terminal was still under construction.

Unfortunately CATS discontinued the service after only 11 weeks; among the problems cited was the absence of a permanent marine passenger terminal in Toronto. The vessel was sold in a bankruptcy sale in February 2005 to Rochester Ferry Company LLC, a subsidiary of the City of Rochester. In April 2005, Rochester Ferry Company LLC announced that the Rochester-Toronto ferry service using Spirit of Ontario I would return, operated by Bay Ferries Great Lakes Limited and using the marketing name "The Cat". The Toronto Port Authority officially opened the International Marine Passenger Terminal on June 27, 2005, three days before ferry service resumed. [1] Even with impressive passenger numbers by the winter of 2006 the ferry service lost funding from the City of Rochester and announced that it would no longer be in business.

In February 2006 REGCO Holdings Inc. signed a contract with the Toronto Port Authority to run an airline service out of the Toronto City Centre (island) Airport. The new airline, run by Robert Deluce, has purchased ten 70 seater Bombardier turboprop planes. Controversy has erupted in part due to Mayor David Miller's pledge to shut down the airport, but also the timing of the previously unannounced deal, right after Federal election.

[edit] Revitalization plans

In late 1999, the most recent plans to revitalize the central area of the Waterfront (between Dufferin Street and Leslie Street) were unveiled and the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation was set up. The corporation is guided by a nine-member board of directors with three members appointed by each of the three (Federal, Provincial and Municipal) levels of government. All three levels appointed the Chair, Financier Robert Fung. In 2003, the corporation appointed a new CEO and President, John W. Campbell.

The Central Waterfront area was once an industrial and shipping area. Decades of attempts to rehabilitate the area have been made, but none has been successful. Many politicians have promised change, but it has yet to occur.

The current revitalization exercise has seen some progress on planning for areas such as the East Bayfront (Yonge Street to Cherry Street) and the Don Lands (North of the railway tracks and between Parliament Street and the Don River), although the Don Lands are not on the waterfront, backing instead onto the Don River. Demolition of an old building kicked off work on the latter project on March 27, 2006. There are a number of projects underway and some that are already complete.

There have been concerns raised in the community about how the health of the ecology is being put behind the drive for City Building. There is also concern that projects are moving forward without a sustainable integrated energy strategy, even though the revitalization corporation budgeted $50 million dollars to undertake this study very early on in the process.

Anti-poverty activists have also questioned plans that do not include subsidized housing or help for the poor.

The jurisdictional issue is a complex one and it is currently causing the visions that have been formed through public consultations and in communications from official bodies over many years to be distorted. The federal government has authority over port facilities and some issues that may be subject to Federal Environmental Assessments (such as projects effecting bodies of water). The province controls the municipality, has Environmental Assessment requirements, has a stake in energy generation and usually makes itself involved in any large ventures that the municipality is attempting to undertake. The municipality has some direct control of the zoning of some sites (not owned by other governments) and responsibility for infrastructure like roads and waste management. To confuse things further, the Ontario provincial government owns much of the land in the TWRC lands. All three levels own some land in the area (71% of total land in central waterfront area) divided among a number of ministries, crown corporations, agencies and other public bodies.

With the restructuring of the city structure, the new city department responsible for the waterfront is now the Toronto Waterfront Secretariat Division.

[edit] Major issues

An important obstacle is the Gardiner Expressway, a raised highway that runs just north of the lakeshore and also serves to separate the city from the lake. Proposals call the highway to be replaced with an at-grade level 10-lane thoroughfare or burying it (tunneling), but implementation of any such plans would be extremely expensive and would entail massive traffic disruptions.

The Front Street Extension is a planned extension of Front Street and by far the most expensive road ever proposed in Canada, with an estimated cost of $170 million for two kilometres. The extension is contentious and has been debated as a planning issue since 1983 when it was first proposed.

The Portlands Energy Centre is a recently approved natural gas electrical generating station, which has met with large-scale local community opposition.

The Toronto Island Airport is an existing airport on parkland. Plans to expand the airport or to link it to the mainland by a bridge are strongly opposed by many. The Toronto Port Authority received a settlement of $35 000 000 by the Federal Government as compensation for cancelling the bridge project.

Renaturalization of the Don River mouth. Straightened in order to accommodate industry, the lower Don Lands are planned to be "renaturalized" and the surrounding flood plain area, including the downtown core are going to be flood proofed by building a berm. There is currently an environmental assessment underway on this proposal. Ecologists are calling for a return to the lacustrine marsh that existed in Ashbridges Bay prior to extensive land filling done since the late 19th century.

The needs of existing recreational stakeholders. For over thirty years, several sailing, rowing, and windsurfing clubs have been using the area east of Cherry Beach and south of Unwin Avenue. These volunteer-run clubs, comprised collectively of up to 2,000 members, have spent many years building up physical and recreational infrastructure which would be difficult to replicate elsewhere. Many of the plans proposed for this area have literally written these clubs off the map.

[edit] Timeline

1911 - Toronto Harbour Commission created to manage port infrastructure
1971 - Ontario Place opens, on man-made islands to the West of the Toronto Islands
1972 - Harbourfront Centre is established by the Federal Government
1988 - Royal Commission set-up to formulate a plan for Toronto's harbour
1999 - Then Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, Premier Mike Harris and Mayor Mel Lastman announced at a press conference the formation of the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Task Force
1999 - Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation is established; Toronto Port Authority created to replace the Toronto Harbour Commission
2000 - The (Robert Fung) Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Task Force Report was released to the public
2004 - The Rochester/Toronto Ferry starts service in May and ends in November
2006 - The Rochester/Toronto Ferry announces that it will no longer be in business
2006 - The Ontario Government proposes a new electrical generation plant in the port lands (Portlands Energy Centre)
2006 - REGCO Holdings signs a 25 year deal with the Toronto Port Authority to run an airline service out of the island airport (Porter Airlines)