From the Star, by Hume:
A glorious kick in the asphalt
Aug. 12, 2006. 07:22 AM
CHRISTOPHER HUME
The future has arrived, if only for 10 days. Opened yesterday and running until next Sunday, with an official launch today at 9 a.m., the central waterfront, along Queens Quay from York to Spadina, has been handed over to pedestrians and cyclists, flowers and grass. The program is a dry run for permanent changes starting next summer.
That's if all goes according to schedule. The pace of change in Toronto the Timid is historically grindingly slow. This time, however, the city pulled out all the stops and made it happen.
After five years of work, plans drawn up by the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corp. are taking shape. The agency, established in 2000 by the federal, provincial and municipal governments, was created to oversee transformation of the waterfront into a mixed-use area that will be home to 100,000 residents.
The alterations to Queens Quay are just another small step along the way. The new scheme, designed by West 8 of Rotterdam and Du Toit Allsopp Hillier of Toronto, has already turned the waterfront into something that would have been unimaginable several years ago.
Though the final version will go beyond what has been done now, the current reconfiguration provides an exciting, even magical, hint of what's to come. Most noticeably, the two eastbound lanes of Queens Quay have been closed to traffic; one lane has become the missing portion of the Martin Goodman Trail, the other a kilometre-long grassy strip. The streetcar tracks, which run down the middle of Queens Quay, are separated from the trail by a long — very long — row of potted geraniums.
As work finished yesterday, it was clear that though these alterations are just a taste of what lies ahead, the potential is enormous. At the same time, the temporary transformation reveals how much still needs to be done.
The most obvious missing element in the temporary arrangement is the urban forest the scheme calls for. That was beyond the scope of this 10-day test, which even in its reduced state cost almost $1 million.
Though some visitors, especially drivers, were confused, initial reaction seemed overwhelmingly positive. And why not? Who would argue with a linear park lined with Muskoka chairs and flowers? Who would complain about setting up a pedestrian zone on the water's edge, a place where families can wander by the shores of Lake Ontario?
"I love it," enthused local resident Ulla Colgrass. "I think it's great. Almost every European city has a pedestrian district and people flock to them."
On the other hand, the ratty state of the sidewalk that runs along the south side of Queens Quay was hard to ignore. And there are problems with cars exiting and entering parking lots south of Queens Quay. The fact that the temporary Martin Goodman Trail is simply the asphalt surface of the pre-existing road also means it's hard to read as a distinct element of its own.
These are the sorts of things that will be dealt with in the final version, which organizers hope will be started next summer. For the next few days, however, they will be looking, measuring, counting and generally trying to understand what works and what doesn't.
"It's gorgeous," said a smiling Adriaan Geuze, who heads the design team. "It's exactly what we had in mind. It's so normal, but now it seems so strange."
Indeed, it did. People weren't sure whether to step on the grass, ride their bikes on the sidewalk or skateboard on the road. Reclaiming the city from the car happens so rarely in Toronto.
"We agonize endlessly about what to do," said Chris Glaisek, the waterfront agency's vice-president of planning and design. "That's why I think this is so spectacular. My greatest hope is that by the end of the trial people will be upset we're taking it down."
Except for diehard drivers, those most abjectly addicted to their vehicles, this will surely be the case. True, the changes don't go far enough in themselves, but the intention was to wake up Torontonians to the possibilities of waterfront revitalization.
West 8 and DTAH propose to build bridges across slips that are now where trails dead-end; they intend to repave the whole area and plant thousands of trees. The hope is to connect the waterfront to the rest of the city and make a setting more conducive to urban life.
Keep in mind also that HT0, the "urban beach" under construction on the water's edge west of John Quay, will be finished one day. Though a year or two behind schedule — who can remember? — the important thing is that it's underway.
"What we have done is really as simple as you can imagine," said Adam Nicklin of DTAH. "But it works. Now we want to see how people colonize it and use it."
Geuze agrees: "It's important to understand traffic circulation, access to condos and whether shopkeepers believe it is good for them."
It helped, of course, that Mayor David Miller adopted the scheme as a personal project; waterfront agency officials say that without pressure from his office, the necessary approvals would have taken months, even years, not weeks. As it was, some permits didn't arrive until hours before work started.
Whatever its limitations and flaws, the next 10 days will be memorable, perhaps even extraordinary; the Queens Quay closing and the new landscape, though temporary, are the best thing to have happened in Toronto in years.
The sooner they become permanent the better.
AoD
