COUNCIL COMMUNITY CONSULTATION
Wednesday 25 March, 4:30-6:30pm
Toronto Multi-Purpose Centre
Chat to Council Staff and get an update on the Toronto Foreshore project
Toronto Foreshore Protection Group representatives met recently with Mayor Fraser and three Council staff. Based on our current understanding it appears that commencement of foreshore upgrades as per the Toronto Foreshore Master Plan (TFMP) would not commence until mid to late 2023. So, why is this likely to be the case? There are several reasons for this but they all stem from liberal interpretations of the six September 2019 Council-adopted recommendations. Seemingly unwarranted delays in progress is the outcome. The recommendations pertained to both the Bath Street site and the rest of the foreshore. Even though recommendation D called for the physical area of TFMP to include the Bath Street site, Council is still dealing in fact with the both ‘projects’ separately.
The major reasons claimed for the delays are:
1. Recommendation A (ii): Council has interpreted this as a review of Council’s entire LGA property portfolio, not just those in Toronto, which is what the community had thought. Be that as it may, the two-staged process that Council is employing to do this means a significant time delay in reporting back (at least mid 2020). Why should this be the case you might ask?
2. Recommendation B: Council has indicated that the process to reclassify [non-Bath Street site]from ‘operational’ foreshore land to ‘community will take at least 18 months (late 2021) but more probably not until 2022/23. Why you might ask, when Council only has to advertise for 28 days an intent to change the classification of public land before passing the resolution to change.
3. Recommendation F: Council has interpreted this as the need for a detailed consultancy project which will consider the merits of a suite of options (including ‘do nothing’, ‘parkland’, ‘mixed use development consistent with the LEP’ and ‘6 storey mixed use development’) against the four ‘pillars’ (economic, social, sustainability and governance) of Council’s Sustainability Policy for the Bath Street site. This process will take until at least mid 2020 to complete. Council has stated that such a process is necessary to assess ‘future use and design elements’ as desired by councillors via this recommendation. But why is Council even considering the do nothing and mixed use commercial options when these have already been ruled out by the community and clearly stated, for example in the Phase 3 engagement report, petitions, meetings and media articles?
4. As a consequence of the above, further work on developing the TFMP (recommendation E) is also on hold as Council considers this to be contingent on F.
Therefore, the community is once again poorer for having to wait for several more years before any improvements occur in spite of the approx. $9M of contributions having been available now for a number of years!
Council elections are due in September 2020. It would be disturbing if the delays in process were simply delaying tactics so that a new Council could reassess the situation. Surely this was not the intent of the September 2019 recommendations?
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