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Portlands, looking in

The Port Lands was as close to a no-man’s land as you could get in Toronto back when Cherry Beach was the place cops took suspects to mete out their peculiar brand of vigilante justice.

Not much has changed since in the bleak, mostly barren, industrial-strength expanse on the eastern waterfront.

But no longer just the purview of trucks kicking up dust on their way to the Cherry Street dump, or the odd urban explorer passing through, the Port area has taken on a life of its own, mostly by accident but also partly by design.

Driving ranges, drive-in movies and the odd patio bar do not a go-to destination make. An accidental paradise, like that other man-made swath of infill on it’s eastern edge, the Leslie Street Spit, the Port Lands is not just yet.

But that a number of disparate uses exist at all in an area practically given up for dead just a few years ago, is just this side of remarkable.

The ripple effects of Waterfront Toronto’s revitalization efforts in the neighbouring Lower Don Lands and the East Bayfront, have had something to do with the Port area’s newfound energy.

Maybe energy is too strong a word. Criss-crossed by rail spurs and dotted with abandoned buildings separated by stretches of nothing but tall grass, the Port Lands still dulls the senses in a land that time forgot kind of way.

Now, an even more unlikely turn awaits beyond the sign post ahead. The Port Lands has become ground zero in a looming development battle, the biggest in years at City Hall.

In one corner, there’s the aforementioned Waterfront Toronto, the tri-level government agency that, after years of malaise, has transformed the water’s edge in the better part of the last decade, with a number of award-winning projects.

In the other, is the Ford administration, specifically, the mayor’s older brother Doug, the councillor for Ward 2 – he of monorails and Ferris wheels dancing in his head – who wants to sell off the 40 per cent of Port Lands property currently controlled by the city and unleash a development free-for-all.

Ford’s infamous musings on the subject of what he viewed as the slow pace of Port Lands development, is what led council asking Waterfront Toronto last September to explore ways of speeding up its efforts the area.

That directive couldn’t have come at a worse time. Just as, in fact, Waterfront Toronto was completing the groundwork, nearly a decade in the making, for its foray into the Port Lands, and an environmental assessment into its plan for a re-naturalization of the Don River was being reviewed by the province.

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Last week, Waterfront Toronto made public the results of its council-ordered consultations with experts, some of the best on the planet on the subject of real estate speculation.

They came back with not an unexpected conclusion: that slowly absorbing the Port Lands, into the life of the city, phasing in planning in other words, is the way forward.

They’re unalterable conclusion: even under the rosiest real estate forecasts, and the market has been humming in Toronto for a decade now, it’ll take 10 development cycles of a decade or more to build out the Port Lands.

Predictably, uncle Doug dismissed the findings in that knee-jerk way he’s known for when reality doesn’t jibe with his world view. His idea of integrated planning? Sticking a shovel in the ground, whether it be for a condo, hotel, or shopping mall, and letting the market dictate which way the development winds blow. A recipe for a planning disaster to be sure.

Ford wants to turn the Port Lands into a private playground for his development friends – even if it leaves the city with a dead zone 20 years from now.

Far be it for me to cast aspersions on the councillor’s motives, even if he was sitting in on board meetings of the Toronto Port Lands Company on the QT when he was hatching his plan for yacht clubs and shopping malls for the Port area all those months ago.

Urban design is a little more involved than putting up a building and crossing your fingers that the right complimentary uses will magically appear to create vibrant space around it. That fact is particularly true in the Port Lands, where the obstacles to moving quickly are many.

First is the sheer size of the area being contemplated for revitalization, some 400 hectares, roughly the size of the downtown core, which has taken 150 years and counting to build.

There is no comparable area the size of the Port Lands being contemplated for development anywhere in the world. Canary Wharf in London, U.K., for example, which is a quarter of the size, took 20 years to build – and only then after being rescued from financial collapse as recently as 2004.

Then there are the physical challenges in the Port Lands.

The area sits almost entirely on a flood plain, the area south of Front created by infill, which means flood protection provisions will have to be made before any development can take place. An extreme weather event like Hurricane Hazel, for example, would cover almost the entire area with water.

The land is also heavily contaminated by years of industrial activity, adding clean up costs and other potential risks developers are not willing to assume (to say nothing of the old dock walls now buried underground that will have to be removed).

To add to the complications, there is very little infrastructure to speak of (water mains, sewer pipes or hydro cable) and no transit to the area, all of which will have to be built to provide impetus for private investment.

Bottom line: some $2.5 billion to $3 billion will be required in infrastructure and flood protection and infrastructure costs alone just for starters.

The business analysis conducted for Waterfront Toronto found that, under current very good market conditions for residential, office and retail development, it would take some 20 years to build out about 10 to 20 per cent of the entire Port Lands.

The potential to create something extraordinary exists. The Pan Am Games-related work going on nearby and employment uses around Pinewood Studios on Eastern Avenue, as well as the industrial uses that have been there for decades provide starting points.

That 40 per cent of the Port Lands is publicly owned shouldn’t be an invitation for a huge sell-off, as Ford is proposing, but used as leverage to guide development, especially around the mouth of the Don River, where Waterfront Toronto has put much effort creating a focal point for the Port.

There, the original plan floated involved creating a naturalized area through publicly owned land and spilling into the outer harbour specifically so parcels wouldn’t have to be expropriated.

Now, thanks to Ford’s intervention, other options are on the table, one of which could mean a loss of some 20 hectares of greenspace for the sake of squeezing in a few more buildings into the equation.

The discussion is also now turning inevitably to ways of generating the revenue needed to accelerate development, including those so-called revenue tools contemplated for the Sheppard subway ie: borrowing against future tax revenue.

But there is no quick fix for the Port Lands. On that fact, there should be no compromising.

@nowtorontonews

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