An urban project in the heart of Ford country
Ambitious new civic centre in Etobicoke enough to outrage supporters of the late mayor
At first blush, the idea of an Etobicoke Civic Centre seems innocuous enough. True, the former suburb no longer has its own mayor or council and, therefore, no need of a city hall.
But civic centre is one of those convenient terms that can handle various meanings.
It could refer to a city hall, of course, then again, it could also be a community gathering place or a neighbourhood amenity.
On second thought, however, the notion of an Etobicoke Civic Centre gives one pause. It’s not obviously oxymoronic, but Etobicoke is a community whose interest in things civic has never gone much beyond collecting garbage and filling potholes. It has a history of providing Toronto city council with some of its most reliably anti-urban members, most famously, the late Rob Ford.
Not only was Ford Etobicoke’s great gift to the planet, he served a decade on Toronto council before becoming mayor in 2010. His 14-year career in politics was built on an unbridled contempt for civic government and a deep distrust of anything associated with the city.
Ford’s claim to fame was that he returned constituents’ phone calls; no gripe was too small for him to attend to, no complaint too parochial for him to fix.
People ate it up hungrily. Ford Nation rallied around its hero as he battled arrogant downtown elites, greedy self-interest groups, lazy bureaucrats, corrupt politicians as well as impertinent cyclists, dawdling pedestrians and traffic-slowing streetcars, anything or anyone who blocked traffic and got in the way.
So when the city’s real estate agency, Build Toronto, launched a rare international design competition for the Etobicoke Civic Centre, some might have wondered how Ford Nation would respond. Anyone even remotely familiar with the movement knows this is exactly the sort of project its hero hated. It is civic aggrandizement run amok, the gravy train made manifest and an unabashed waste of taxpayers’ hardearned money. As mentioned, thanks to former Ontario premier Mike Harris, Etobicoke was amalgamated with, ahem, Toronto, home of those bleeding-heart latte-sippers, and has little official use for such a venue, especially one that costs $77 million.
According to the Build Toronto website, “The Etobicoke Civic Cen- tre is envisioned as the new focus of activity, commerce and civic celebrations for the Etobicoke York District. The new civic centre will include municipal offices and facilities such as a recreation centre, a library and a child care centre, surrounding a new central civic square.”
Sounds great, but has anyone informed the good people of Etobicoke? It’s bad enough that Etobicoke was forced to become part of a city, does it have to look like one too?
When Build Toronto announced recently that the winner of the competition is a team including one of Denmark’s most celebrated architectural firms, Henning Larsen Architects, insult was added to injury. Other cities would welcome any of the short-listed proposals with open arms. The architects and landscape architects that made the cut come from Rotterdam, Copenhagen and London as well as Toronto, but that counts for little in youknow-where.
In other words, this project has about it the whiff of civic do-goodism. It sounds suspiciously like one of those well-intended gestures from Latteland, another Scarbor- ough subway, political, paternalistic but less contentious and a whole lot cheaper.
Perhaps to justify the project, organizers got local councillor and Build Toronto director, Justin Di Ciano (Ward 5 Etobicoke Lakeshore), to provide his take on the civic centre. “Through the international design competition, industry jury selection and public input,” he wrote, “we are all helping to shape the new Etobicoke Civic Centre — which is exactly what civic centres represent.”
Hard to say exactly what that means, but Di Ciano’s words sound vaguely positive.
“This will not only become the new heart of Etobicoke,” he continued, “but it will also create a renewed area of activity, commerce and civic space for the local community and the City.”
The usual well-intentioned boilerplate. But it does seem Di Ciano is — let’s be honest — less than wildly excited. The civic centre’s emphasis on pedestrians, cyclists, sustainability and design excellence won’t win many hearts and minds in a part of the city where there is only one question: What would Rob Ford have thought?
You don’t have to come from Etobicoke to know the answer to that one. Christopher Hume’s column appears weekly. He can be reached at jcwhume4@gmail.com