argus
Active Member
I just can't get excited about a project that's obviously just an attempt to get more taxpayer dollars for the land. It's clear Tory sees Rail Deck Park as his legacy project and will probably just throw money at making it happen, and these developers know it.
If it is to be a legacy then it needs to be more than a collection of tennis courts and some patches of grass that will be browned by endless dog pee. To be clear, this park will be a project coming with a price tag way north of a billion dollars. That number already puts the whole thing into doubt.
It just might be achievable if the city actually considers what is being proposed here as a positive and holds the developers to achieving high-quality design as one stipulation for being allowed to proceed. I would prefer a slightly smaller green space if it was paid for with high-quality urbanism. The proposal here holds the possibility for this - delivering not only downtown green space, but a public space as well. Add to that, Front street from Spadina to Bathurst would become a real urban thoroughfare rather than an arterial afterthought. And it would be nice if quality architecture like this were promoted over the simplistic tower-on-podium that city planning so loves to push.
Sure, there would obviously be traffic issues, but there are already traffic issues throughout the city. Stopping development isn't really an option to fixing that issue.
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