There is....a *lot*....going on here. I use this park daily, it's my "backyard" and I'm looking at the renders and just wondering how and when - not if - all of those busy, fussy, and in my opinion completely superfluous, overdesigned, tacky, and unnecessary features are going to be degraded, vandalized, neglected and abused in true Toronto fashion. In the summer, for example, there are at least six or seven encampments in the park at any given time, multiple protests, ad-hoc raves and any other number of things that are going to collide head-on with - I'll be blunt - the completely naive, overly academic and vacuum-sealed vision of the park outlined here, one that is divorced from reality. I can't even imagine how long some of that park furniture is going to last when, as happened last summer, some guys in an encampment starting actually putting up plywood and *stealing power* from one of the lampposts to the point where they were building a quasi-favela.
Everything I'm seeing here is a solution in search of a problem.
The park, as it is, works *very* well aside from issues I'll mention below. It's minimalist and, most importantly, practical, as thousands of students and residents have to "commute" through it each and every day. Fussing with that will cause problems (I can see ad-hoc desire paths form everywhere if existing walkways from one side to the other to U of T are in any way obstructed. I remember basically racing through that park to go from a class at UC to one at Vic. I suspect that hasn't changed in thirty years).
Unless this park is maintained by a kind of Central Park Conservancy quasi-private workforce of multiple daily cleans and repairs, I can predict the following:
- the treewalk will be tagged and coffee cups, dog shit bags, drug paraphernalia and other crap left everywhere
- the water features will probably be broken and used for...other purposes...by "local characters"
- any of those chairs and tables that aren't bolted down will disappear, or be thrown and smashed in random places and be covered in graffiti; I feel sorry for any cleaning crew who has to show up on a Monday morning in the summer. I walk by this park to work and can attest that in the summer months it is a constant mess that the Parks Department can *barely* keep up with; add thousands more people spontaneously picnicking, etc. and that park basically needs people sweeping trash all day to keep up with it; all those nooks and crannies and random surfaces in the renders will just be another place for people to leave crap everywhere, this isn't Japan
- a cafe for what, exactly? Just another garbage generator and how is it serviced? Who maintains it? Think of all the deliveries a Tim Hortons or Starbucks needs on a daily basis, at least a few truckloads worth. Where are the loading facilities for this? How do supply trucks backing in and out add to anything? How quickly are the washrooms going to be closed off? If you want a preview of this go to the 7-11 at Bay and St. Joseph and see for yourself.
- those benches next to the running trail...eh... I see bad things happening there if people aren't paying attention. The runners there do *not* yield for anyone.
There's too much "there", there, like a committee was struck to look for problems, found them, and are throwing everything at the wall in an attempt to "fix" things. Spruce up a few things at the margins, sure, but this is just ridiculous overkill. Within five years many if not most of its elements will have to be fixed or upgraded or removed, essentially a parks version of the ROM. But hey, it's the Westons' money, use it or lose it I guess.
