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buildup said:
Also, the College Park 'park' should be rethought once Aura is done. Great potential there.
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Definitely! There's a fair amount of wasted space, especially in the lower area down by the north mall entrance. I imagine a lot of concrete being dug up there replaced by hilly green-space along with overall beautification of what currently exists. The return of the skating area by winter would be terrific and well used plus a grand fountain during the warmer months in the middle would be a dream come true. Replace some benches, add more perennials to the gardens, re-do the walkways with more attractive materials and we've got a smashing good park.
 
Don't know if you've seen it yet, but Department of Unusual Certainties have done some interesting work documenting and categorizing the hundreds of parkettes in Toronto, with an exhibition now on at Harbourfront that reminds me of this thread.
 
Regarding the park at College Park, isn't the Aura developer going to clean up the park as part of a deal with the city?
 
Thanos said:
Regarding the park at College Park, isn't the Aura developer going to clean up the park as part of a deal with the city?
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There will be more than cleaning it up, but yes.
 
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Thanks DT, have there been any renderings or news as to what it will look like or what they'll be changing?
 
dt_toronto_geek said:
Definitely! There's a fair amount of wasted space, especially in the lower area down by the north mall entrance. I imagine a lot of concrete being dug up there replaced by hilly green-space along with overall beautification of what currently exists. The return of the skating area by winter would be terrific and well used plus a grand fountain during the warmer months in the middle would be a dream come true. Replace some benches, add more perennials to the gardens, re-do the walkways with more attractive materials and we've got a smashing good park.
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It is highly unlikely that the areas abutting college park will be renovated as they are not part of the park land or Canderel but rather owned by GWL, so unless they do it for the benefit of the their own property those wasted areas will remain the same as seen today, even in all the renderings of the park I have seen that space is untouched.
 
TOfan696 said:
It is highly unlikely that the areas abutting college park will be renovated as they are not part of the park land or Canderel but rather owned by GWL, so unless they do it for the benefit of the their own property those wasted areas will remain the same as seen today, even in all the renderings of the park I have seen that space is untouched.
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Thanos said:
Thanks DT, have there been any renderings or news as to what it will look like or what they'll be changing?
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Somewhere buried deep in the Aura thread is a final Staff report (unfortunately I didn't download and archive it as I often do with many projects I'm interested in) that allocates funds from the Aura project to the park in College Park. I'm positive I read that.
 
I just loved the pictures .. I wish I could personally go there and visit these places...!! Has anyone been there personally... How have you found these parks ... I want to know about your experience... Thank you!!
 
Celluine said:
I just loved the pictures .. I wish I could personally go there and visit these places...!! Has anyone been there personally... How have you found these parks ... I want to know about your experience... Thank you!!
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All the pictures that I took are parks and parkettes in downtown Toronto. I think I covered perhaps 75% of them plus there are the Toronto Islands Parks (a 10 minute ferry ride from downtown) which is simply too huge to photograph. Some will take exception to this statement but I think our parks are by and large very clean and well maintained by the City plus they are completely safe by day and night. Many parks are used well during the warmer months for neighbourhood festivals to major events. What's lacking to a great extent when compared to many American parks are statues, monuments, gates, stone bridges and such. Toronto is a much newer city than many larger American cities so we don't quite have the history that you do, and for what we do have we don't celebrate it as well as Americans do.
This summer we went about five weeks with virtually no rain at all so the parks this summer didn't look so great at the height of summer. Lots of brown grass, perennials and annuals didn't fare as well except drought tolerant plants but in the last few weeks the grass is finally looking much better thanks to normal rainfalls in August.
 
I'm kind of concerned about the maintenance of Queen's Park this summer, it's worse than ever. The fountain at the s/w corner of the park has a metal fence blocking off access, several large old trees have huge dead branches that are ready to drop, one has and a 40 or so foot branch has been blocking a main walking path behind the Edward VII statue for several weeks now, speaking of the statue erosion continues to deteriorate the hill on which it sits with rocks coming loose and laying at the foot of the hill and a bench has collapsed and is covered in caution tape. It's not only a shame for locals who enjoy the park but hugely embarrassing for us to tourists who make their way through there. I want to call someone about all of this but I don't know who, I don't think this park is maintained by the City.
 
dt_toronto_geek said:
I'm kind of concerned about the maintenance of Queen's Park this summer, it's worse than ever. The fountain at the s/w corner of the park has a metal fence blocking off access, several large old trees have huge dead branches that are ready to drop, one has and a 40 or so foot branch has been blocking a main walking path behind the Edward VII statue for several weeks now, speaking of the statue erosion continues to deteriorate the hill on which it sits with rocks coming loose and laying at the foot of the hill and a bench has collapsed and is covered in caution tape. It's not only a shame for locals who enjoy the park but hugely embarrassing for us to tourists who make their way through there. I want to call someone about all of this but I don't know who, I don't think this park is maintained by the City.
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Best place to start is to call 311. Then email Councillors Wong-Tam and Layton.

EDIT: Someone I work with had some questions about a city issue recently and after 30 minutes on the city's website he gave up trying to figure it out.
I suggested calling 311 and literally 2 minutes later he had the answers and had a phone number for the person in charge. They are quite efficient.
 
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dt_toronto_geek said:
I'm kind of concerned about the maintenance of Queen's Park this summer, it's worse than ever. The fountain at the s/w corner of the park has a metal fence blocking off access, several large old trees have huge dead branches that are ready to drop, one has and a 40 or so foot branch has been blocking a main walking path behind the Edward VII statue for several weeks now, speaking of the statue erosion continues to deteriorate the hill on which it sits with rocks coming loose and laying at the foot of the hill and a bench has collapsed and is covered in caution tape. It's not only a shame for locals who enjoy the park but hugely embarrassing for us to tourists who make their way through there. I want to call someone about all of this but I don't know who, I don't think this park is maintained by the City.
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Gotta love Toronto eh? If this happened in Central Park, the mentioned trees would be taken care of almost instantly. There's a park in my neighbourhood that was dying and had all it's branches cut off by the city last fall. For some reason they left the trunk standing and even though I've emailed the parks advisor several times to have the job completed, it hasn't changed. The city really is incompetent when it comes to simple tasks such as park maintenance. Our idea of keeping our parks in good order is cutting the grass once a week, sometimes once every two weeks. Anything more is just unnecessary. For too long this city's mindset has been to be merely operable. We basically never go the extra yard to make the city beautiful. Taking a walk through our ravines is so depressing. The potential that lies within them will probably never be realized. My dream would be to see the creeks naturalized. Have all the chunks of concrete removed from the water. Remove all the garbage that has been building up for decades and have regular cleanups. I'd like to see groups assigned to specific regions in the city and frequently visit the respective ravines to collect garbage and remove dead trees, broken branches. I believe we only have a group of 6 individuals responsible for all city ravines at the moment. It's simply not enough. The ravine system is so vast. Another thing I'd like to see is school yards being held to the same property standards as homes. Too many of them have massive weeds growing out of their asphalt playing fields. There's a bike rack at the elementary school I used to attend that literally has 5 foot tall weeds growing out of it right now. I emailed 311 about this and I guess they got in contact with the school because I can see someone has cut some of the weeds down. Unfortunately that is useless. They need their roots removed. One last thing. Has anyone noticed recent tree plantings in city parks seem to follow the same pattern? They're either planted in straight lines or in triangular formations. This looks ridiculous. Trees don't naturally occur in such patterns. I'd also like to see more sassafras, red oak and white pines planted, among other native species. We're planting more Kentucky Coffee Bean trees, which is a good thing, but more variety is needed.
 
Jonny5 said:
Best place to start is to call 311. Then email Councillors Wong-Tam and Layton.
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I presumed the park was run by the province, not the City but I did indeed call 311 shortly after I put up the post and the city does maintain the park. They transferred me to the voice mail for the Parks Supervisor so I left a voice mail with my name, ph. number and issues in the park.
 
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