Priority to Make Progress on the Waterfront

Background on this priority

Great cities around the world have been founded on the shores of great lakes. Toronto’s waterfront has a rich history of trade, commerce, tourism, culture, recreation and greenspace. In 2003 City Council adopted a Central Waterfront Secondary Plan following an intensive public engagement process involving over 1600 citizens at 25 public meetings.

Toronto’s Future?
Canary Wharf was the hub of busy cargo warehouses that served the London docks until the port industry began to decline in the 1960s. A project was conceived to revitalize eight square miles of the derelict docks beginning in 1981. By 2005 over 75,000 people worked in the new development, with Canary Wharf becoming an attractive shopping destination with over 200 shops and 500,000 people visiting the Wharf each week.

Toronto, through the partnership of the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation (TWRC) oversees a number of projects including improvements to Cherry Beach, a new public promenade at the water’s edge at York Quay and the construction of a new pier out into the lake. Plans are underway for a Tommy Thompson Park, a Discovery Centre devoted to the unique natural heritage environment and activities in the Baselands and Leslie Street Spit and the construction of a dragon boat watercourse. Plans to develop the West Don Lands and the East Bayfront have been the subject of extensive public consultation. Efforts have been made to consider the social, environmental and economic implications of each plan.

Toronto has 46 kilometres of shoreline that stretch from Mimico Creek in the west to the Rouge River in the east. The waterfront plan will transform 800 hectares of mostly vacant and under-used land along the central waterfront - an area more than 10 times the size of London’s Canary Wharf. Seventy per cent of this land is in public hands, sixty-five per cent of which is owned by the City of Toronto.

City Council has approved the City’s membership in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative. Mayor Miller, working in partnership with Canadian and US mayors for the restoration and protection of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River, will assume the Chair of this initiative in June, 2006. The Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative provides a forum for 85 cities and towns involved in decision-making with federal, provincial, and state governments on education, best practices, cooperation and leadership and action. Toronto is one of 43 “Areas of Concern” which require remediation to improve environmental conditions.