Toronto Sun Editorial

We’re only going to get one chance to develop what’s left of Toronto’s water­front, so let’s get it right.

What not to do is appar­ent to any­one look­ing west along the water­front from Yonge St. at the wall of unin­spir­ing con­do­minium tow­ers that cuts off the city from the shores of Lake Ontario.

It’s a plan­ning mis­take we don’t want to repeat on the unde­vel­oped and under­de­vel­oped port lands, east of Yonge.

Coun. Doug Ford recently expressed frus­tra­tion over the lack of a sig­na­ture build­ing and the slow pace of this devel­op­ment, sug­gest­ing it would be bet­ter to turn things over to the pri­vate sector.

He described Water­front Toronto, the joint fed­eral, provin­cial, city agency cre­ated a decade ago to over­see devel­op­ment, with a $500-million con­tri­bu­tion from each level of gov­ern­ment, as a “boondoggle.”

Shortly after, Mayor Rob Ford expressed sim­i­lar views to his brother’s, adding the city will review whether it has been get­ting good value for the money it has invested in the agency.

Of course, Water­front Toronto must be ready to open its books and defend its actions at any time.

And it’s true the pace of devel­op­ment on the water­front has been slow and frustrating.

But even devel­op­ers who are now invest­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in projects along the east­ern water­front, have come to the defence of Water­front Toronto in the wake of the Fords’ criticisms.

They say the agency has made it eas­ier for them to get their projects going and pro­vided the incen­tives — such as improv­ing munic­i­pal infra­struc­ture — that will lead to thriv­ing busi­nesses and liv­able, tax-paying com­mu­ni­ties, not just another wall of con­dos.

So far, the work of Water­front Toronto and other city agen­cies has pro­duced some gen­uine suc­cess sto­ries along the waterfront.

There’s Sher­bourne Com­mon and the new head­quar­ters for Corus enter­tain­ment, which will soon be sold at a large profit to the city.

Just west of the Corus build­ing are the invit­ing white sands of Sugar Beach — a new place for fam­i­lies to hang out.

Con­struc­tion has begun on a new com­plex for George Brown Col­lege and three major devel­op­ers — Great Gulf, Urban Cap­i­tal and Hines — are work­ing on big projects in the area.

The West Don Lands will be the home of the new ath­letes’ vil­lage for the 2015 Pan Am Games, leav­ing a legacy of afford­able hous­ing for the city.

It’s under­stand­able the Ford broth­ers are frus­trated over the time it’s tak­ing to develop the water­front — who isn’t? But the solu­tion isn’t a fire sale of city land at this point in time.

Rather than dis­man­tling Water­front Toronto or with­draw­ing from it, we think the answer is to keep a close eye on its oper­a­tions — with the mayor, who has a seat on the agency, either attend­ing the meet­ings him­self, or appoint­ing a des­ig­nate in his place.

Given his con­cerns, per­haps the ideal can­di­date would be Doug Ford.

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Con­tact the Jef­frey Team for more infor­ma­tion – 416−388−1960

Lau­rin & Natalie Jef­frey are Toronto Real­tors with Cen­tury 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these arti­cles, they just repro­duce them here for peo­ple
who are inter­ested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
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