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This August will be a 10 day trial, then back to the 4 lane road. I have done more than read speculation on this subject. I also have a realistic understanding of what people say vs really want. Area residents may want a 2 lane Queens Quay, but City of Toronto residents on the whole are going to make a stink about it, OR a transportation study (you know there will be one) will bog it down and nothing will result. I look forward to a 2 lane Queens Quay, but highly doubt it.
Sorry, but I have serious doubts over the closure of any roads in Toronto. I would LOVE to see it happen and think that it is important for unifying the waterfront, but I still have my doubts.

Re: Foster's teardrops- if the city isnt going to invest in the maple leaf board walk (whose purpose is actually to act as a natural lake cleaner), which could be acheived rather inexpensively, they are not going to invest in building high cost, small hotels which they will rent out to corporations at a loss.

Sure, the maple leaf boardwalk would be seen only from an elevated site, but look at how many people would see it... there are a tonne of local residents who would see it from their office towers and condos. More importantly, tourists would see it when they go up the CN Tower (which has to be Toronto's #1 attraction). I know if I was a tourist going up the tower and saw that maple leaf on the water, I would want to know what it is. Finding out you can walk on it, I would head straight over there.

The floating Maple Leaf would be a HUGE plus for a Toronto World Fair. It would be a major attraction, and could showcase how we can clean the dirty lake naturally. If anything, this is one part of the proposal which should stay. It would be a really interesting feature of Toronto's World Fair bid.
 
Temp Maple Leafs and Who cares about Queen's Quay?

The floating maple leafs plan is all but officially dead.

However, I wouldn't mind spending several million dollars in public funds on a temporary exhibition of the floating leafs to mark a special ocassion like the 6 months of Expo 2015 or make it a national project to celebrate the 150 anniversary of Confederation in 2016.

I agree it could be a MAJOR tourist attraction. It would be a one time must see like the gates project in Central Park in New York.

Once it's done the boardwalk could be split up in 13 pieces and sent off to various parts of the country or maybe all around the world! something overly grand like that.

Regarding closing lanes on Queen's Quay, I bet 99% of drivers in Toronto and the GTA have never driven on it and wouldn't even know how to get to it with the walls of condos blocking it and the water, so they could care less if a few lanes were closed.

Louroz
 
I definitely look forward to this, and I'll try to make my way down to the waterfront to try out the "linear park".

Street closures have already become a way of life in this city, especially this summer. Just about every ethnic group has/will shut down a major street for a "Taste of..." festival. Add the Toronto Street Festival, various parades and World Cup celebrations, and it looks like a great summer for the pedestrian (and hell for the drivers). The logical next step might be to make some of these road closures more permanent, say every weekend for open air markets (including Asian-style night markets) and other events. I know Kensington Market is doing something like that right now, but it hasn't been done on a major thoroughfare yet. I think Queen's Quay would be a perfect location to test out something like that.
 
Lets shut the Gardiner down for a full summer to host some kind of festival (and I am not talking a fundraising bike ride on one day).
Wouldnt that be fun???
 
From the Globe:

A tantalizing glimpse of future waterfront

JENNIFER LEWINGTON

CITY HALL BUREAU CHIEF

A sneak peek at a future, livelier central waterfront goes on display for two weeks next month.

The idea behind the project, which runs Aug. 11-20, is to give Toronto residents a taste now of design changes planned for Queens Quay West that won't materialize for several years.

The installation includes a one-kilometre-long lawn on one lane of Queens Quay, flower gardens beside the streetcar tracks, sandboxes at the head of slips, sculptures and a new connection to the Martin Goodman Trail between Spadina Avenue and Jarvis Street.

But these features are temporary, and they will disappear again after the conclusion of the event, which is to be put on by the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corp.

Even a glimpse of the future is better than a long wait for the real thing, says one official, however.

"We want to get something out there for people to experience quickly," says Chris Glaisek, vice-president of planning and design for the agency responsible for renewal of the city's shoreline.

Last month, the TWRC selected West 8, an urban design and landscape architecture firm based in Rotterdam, to ensure continuous public access to the water's edge in the central waterfront and transform Queens Quay into an iconic boulevard. The designer's core idea is to remove two lanes of traffic on the south side of the Queens Quay streetcar line in order to reclaim public space along the waterfront.

Temporary sculptures made of lost and stolen bicycles will be installed at the foot of Spadina Avenue and York Street to mark the new, if short-lived, connections to the Martin Goodman Trail.
_________________________________________________

Very smart move on the part of TWRC to create buy-in for the scheme.

AoD
 
tudararms:

Slow? They've announced the winner in May and we're seeing action by August. That's shockingly fast.

AoD
 
The mesh of rebar is in place, just below where the final surface will be, along the waterfront promenade on the east side of HtO. The trees were planted some time ago. With the work on John Quay, too, this area is being rapidly transformed, even without this latest good news.
 
looks like site prep is begining in the east bayfront end of queens quay
 
From the Post:

Never mind the gap, cyclists
Trail to be extended along Quay -- but only for 10 days

Peter Kuitenbrouwer, National Post
Published: Saturday, August 05, 2006

Twelve thousand geraniums and hundreds of strips of sod will temporarily transform a one-kilometre section of the Queen's Quay West into a pedestrian, picnicking and cycling utopia next week.

The $1-million project will, from Aug 11-20, complete the missing link of the Martin Goodman trail. The trail from Etobicoke ends abruptly at Bathurst Street and resumes at Jarvis Street; the gap has long been a sore spot for cyclists, joggers and inline skaters.

But sports enthusiasts should not get their hopes up. On August 21 the trail will disappear again, and it will be many years before the city builds a permanent link to join the two ends of Toronto's most popular trail.

"They don't seem to be taking cycling as a serious mode of transportation at all," commented Wayne Scott, a longtime cycling advocate with the Active Transportation Workers Guild. "They're trying to do something but it's pretty ineffectual."

New York's Project for Public Spaces this week named Toronto's waterfront, where condo towers separate people from Lake Ontario, to its "Hall of Shame."

The Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corp., the group funded by the city, province and feds to breathe life into the city's troubled waterfront, says it will spend $1-million on the geranium/sod project, which it calls "Quay to the City."

Right now Queen's Quay has two eastbound and two westbound lanes, with a dedicated streetcar lane down the centre.

The waterfront corp. in June chose an Amsterdam-Toronto design team, West 8/du Toit Allsopp Hillier, as winners of a competition to rework the stretch of Queen's Quay from Bathurst Street to Bay Street. Under the winning design, cars will get one lane in each direction to the north of the streetcar tracks, while cyclists and pedestrians will get the two southern lanes.

Implementing the plan temporarily will give people a brief taste of this future.

"The design competition generated a lot of hope," said Kristen Jenkins, spokeswoman for the Waterfront Corp. "The Jury said, 'You should keep the momentum going so that people can start experiencing the benefits.' "

The Waterfront Corp. has hired Humber Nurseries to grow the 12,000 geraniums in Jordan Station on the Niagara Peninsula. Last week they delivered 70 geraniums in green buckets to media across Toronto to promote the event.

During the ten days, motorists will not be able to travel east on the Queen's Quay.

Making permanent changes to the stretch from Bathurst to Bay Street will cost $60-million and won't be done for three years or more, said Ms. Jenkins.

"We have about half the money," she said. "We have to do an environmental assessment."

Darren Stehr, active in Advocacy for Respect for Cyclists, asked, "Why do they need to do an environmental assessment if they are taking cars away?"

Meanwhile, continuing the bike lane east from Bay to Jarvis Street is a different project for which there is as yet no plan.

"I don't know what happens at Yonge Street," Ms. Jenkins said. "A huge piece of that property is owned by the private sector. We have to sort that out."

Mr. Stehr said even permanent bike lanes are of limited use in Toronto because motorists park in them and never get a ticket.

"The city is good at doing shows but not good at following through," he said. "That part of Queen's Quay is very dangerous for bike riders. I want to see something well designed and properly enforced."

pkuitenbrouwer@nationalpost.com
© National Post 2006

AoD
 
I wonder if the city got soaked on those geraniums this year... the city should have been able to pick them up for perhaps 60 cents ea. There was an impressive glut of them this year (and I'm talking millions of surplus geraniums)...
 
I know Kensington Market is doing something like that right now
Click to expand...

Kensington Market (College to Dundas, Spadina to Augusta) closes from 12 noon on the last Sunday of the month through until October. Lots of funky street musicians, food, sidewalk shopping, great people and a terrific vibe. Recommended!
 
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