Waterfront plans spark flood of questions

Re Google eyes massive waterfront expansion, Feb. 15 As a community representative, I have shared in more than 20 years of dreaming and planning for the future of the Port Lands, first under the auspices of the city but for most of the time working with Waterfront Toronto. As a result, work has already begun on renaturalizing the Lower Don River and flood protecting the Port Lands and South Riverdale. A plan for the rest of the huge Port Lands site provides a framework for the long-term regeneration and development of the rest of it, mostly city owned. Public support for the city’s and Waterfront Toronto’s plans was enough to defeat the Ford brothers’ alternate scheme a few years ago.

At no time have stakeholders been warned that private interests were going to be allowed to “incorporate a capital light, asset manager-like approach” with the aim of being “good stewards of Alphabet’s capital” rather than committed to the welfare of the Canadian public.

In your report on Sidewalk’s plans for takeover, Waterfront Toronto is not mentioned. Has this public agency already agreed that Sidewalk should usurp the role it has shared with the city so far? Have the three government partners already approved or encouraged this? I and other community members have asked Waterfront Toronto people many times for the truth about what the city is getting into in this deal. Waterfront Toronto has won public respect for the way it has already brought about huge improvements on the waterfront, always open to the hopes and concerns of the community and setting the highest standards of design and sustainability. Why would we take the waterfront’s biggest project away from an agency that has always served the public interest and hand it over to the “stewards of Alphabet’s capital?” Julie Beddoes, Toronto