Park proposal gaining ground
Toronto is starting to move on ambitious plan to create a ‘Green Line’ through the city
When architect Helena Grdadolnik attended neighbourhood association meetings in 2012 about upgrades to two parks near her Davenport Rd. office, she got an idea.
It was to develop a five-kilometre linear park and trail — like New York’s High Line or Chicago’s 606, but at ground level — that would snake through the existing hydro corridor making one seamless path from Earlscourt Park to Spadina Rd. out of nine disconnected parks and parkettes.
“They could become a destination,” Grdadolnik said, “and connect people and so many communities across the way.” The dream of Toronto’s Green Line was born. Three years later, the city is starting to take small steps toward making the ambitious plan a reality, with unused land at the corners of Dovercourt Rd. and Geary Ave., and Lansdowne Ave. and Davenport Rd., on the list to be licensed as parks in 2016. The land is owned by the province and leased by Hydro One.
“In the last year, we’ve really seen momentum build,” said Grdadolnik, the director of Workshop Architecture, a firm that specializes in community spaces.
“It’s really great because the city has been acknowledging this as a project as well,” she added.
Grdadolnik held a design competition in 2012 to drum up interest, and since then community groups Park People and Friends of the Green Line have taken up the rallying cry for the linear park.
The Green Line repurposes an infrastructure corridor, just like New York’s High Line, which is built on an elevated abandoned rail line. Toronto’s green spaces would stay at grade, but be connected by pedestrian-cyclist bridges and crossings.
As cities build out and space is squeezed, linear parks make sense because “it’s hard to find a swath of new land that we’re going to (use to) make a great huge park,” Grdadolnik said.
The Green Line runs through neighbourhoods the city has identified as needing more green areas. But in between are a few parking lots — used by the TTC, George Brown College and the Tarragon Theatre — and other underused urban space.
“There’s a couple of, I guess I would call, missing teeth,” said Grdadolnik, adding that the existing parking lots would be incorporated into the path.
Some things would be easy for the city to do, she said, such as putting a gate on the chain-link fence at the TTC parking lot at Bathurst. Others, like adding pedestrian/cyclist bridges to dangerous underpass crossings along the way, would take more money and political will.
“What we want is a to-do list or a shopping list of what needs to happen to make this linear park a re- ality,” Grdadolnik said.
Jake Tobin Garrett of Park People said the key will be to provide a “seamless connection” along the route. “Getting more land in the hydro corridor as parks is one part of it, but the connecting all of that land together is another crucial piece of the puzzle,” he said.
Garrett said there is no dollar figure attached to the Green Line, but students at Ryerson University are working out costs as part of their classroom work. He added the Green Line could potentially be connected to the West Toronto Railpath, an existing linear trail built on a former railway line.
Richard Ubbens, director of parks with the city, is supportive of the project but said it’s the kind of thing “that will take a long time.”
In addition to the licensing of land as parks, he said there is also money in the city’s 2016 budget, if approved by council, to improve the playground at Geary Ave. parkette along the line.
“We’ve decided that there could be connections made; let’s see how we could make the connections,” said Ubbens of the department’s approach.
“But we’ve got to find the funding.”
There’s also the fact the park would be under an active hydro corridor.
“We don’t really encourage people to stay for a long time underneath the high tension wires,” Ubbens said. “It’s one thing if you want to be there for shorter durations. But to be there all day playing cricket? Probably not.”
A handful of city councillors support the vision, and the Green Line was part of Mayor John Tory’s parks platform during his 2014 campaign.
But council has never discussed the vision of Green Line as a whole, said Ward 21 Councillor Joe Mihevc.
Instead, things are being done “bit by bit.”
Mihevc said he is working with the parks department to turn the “stretch of frankly derelict land” between Bathurst and Christie along the line into a community garden with a pathway.
“What we’re trying to avoid, frankly, is a balkanization of the hydro corridor,” he said.
The community groups “have very wisely set the vision. And so now, it’s really trying to figure out how to implement pieces of it,” he added.
“Very often it’s been my experience that when you do bit by bit, at some point there’s a tipping point.”