"During the precinct plan we looked at, 'How wide is this street? If it's this wide, then the built form should only be this high.' " "How do you create a neighbourhood that looks organic, that doesn't look like it was all built at once?" Ms. Instead of a sea of massive condo towers, the plan is to keep things mostly mid-rise and definitely diverse in the Canary District. "There's probably more parkland as a ratio to the community being built in this neighbourhood than any other community in downtown Toronto." It's quick access to the trail system for biking and walkers," he said. "It will act almost like a trailhead to the ravine system on the east side of Toronto, as well as to the waterfront to the south. Lester said, is the 18-acre park being built for a pricetag in excess of $15-million, which will connect with the Don River Trail to the north (a project funded by all three levels of government through Waterfront Toronto). One of the essential elements of the area, Mr.
People will be walking to their local café and local bakery and cheese shop and butcher." "You will have restaurants, cafés, grocery stores, banks – all those things will happen so that on the ground floor there aren't dead spaces. "To create a neighbourhood that feels like it's grown over time, we have in the bylaw a requirement for animated space on all the ground-floor areas of Front, Bayview and Cherry ," Ms. Front Street will be a wide boulevard that will encourage foot traffic. Lots of permeability, lots of pedestrian connections and bike connections," she said. "We set up the streets and blocks so no block is very long it will be very pedestrian friendly. Through these stringent guidelines, Waterfront Toronto will ensure the area stays walkable and "human scale," Ms. The precinct plan resulted in a set of urban design guidelines that developers would have to adhere to in the West Don Lands, governing everything from the location of the streets to sidewalk widths, building heights and setbacks. "When they went after the bid, we got a call from the province asking, 'Can you fit the athletes village into the West Don Lands block plan?' We were excited about the Pan Am, because it meant advancing the West Don Lands by about five or 10 years, getting it to market that much sooner." "This is long before Pan Am was a twinkle in anyone's eye," said Meg Davis, vice-president of development at Waterfront Toronto, an organization created by all three levels of government to implement the waterfront's renewal. Waterfront Toronto was enlisted by the Ontario government to do a precinct plan for the 80 acres of West Don Lands area back in 2005.
The Canary District is a community that has been meticulously planned. "I think we're going to see a community that all of Toronto can be proud of."Ĭreating a successful neighbourhood from nothing is no small feat, but with a commitment to mid-rise, mixed-use development, ample recreational space and a progressive private-public funding model, the players involved hope they will create a community that works, while avoiding the pitfalls of athletes villages of the past.
"By the time the entire West Don Lands is built out, it's going to be approximately 5,000 units … multiple daycares, community centres and schools," Mr. Lawrence Market, Corktown and the Distillery District. The buildings will be converted and sold as condo and townhouse units, creating the foundation of a new downtown east side community that will knit together other communities such as St. But the end goal goes far beyond a sporting event. First, the Ontario government has given Dundee Kilmer the job of creating housing for 10,000 athletes and coaches for the 2015 Pan American Games. "We're going to create the most sustainable mixed-use development that the city has ever seen," said Jason Lester, president of Dundee Kilmer Development Limited, the real estate developer leading the creation of the "Canary District" – named after the now-closed Canary Restaurant that operated from a 19th century Cherry Street building since the 1960s. But the minds behind the new development in the West Don Lands believe they are going to accomplish just that. It seems like a daunting challenge: Take a parcel of derelict land on the east side of Toronto's core that has sat unused for more than 40 years, and transform it into an urban community that rivals the city's most thriving neighbourhoods.