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LAI LAND ECONOMICS WEEKEND VIEWS It’s been called “a city in mid-puberty,” LEW an adolescent place needing to decide—and soon— what it wants to be when it grows up. Will COMMITTEE “Toronto the Good” become “The 6ix,” Drake’s languid and assured city that has stopped car- TORONTO ing if anyone notices? Or will it be Rob Ford’s, focussed not on grand visions, but on diligently BRONWYN KROG UrbanForme solving small problems at street level? Born Saint Paul, Minn.; Historically, Toronto has not dreamt big— to Muddy York in 1975. it preferred careful architecture and avoided “It’s just pure luck grand avenues. (Narrow streets, as well as penny- that I was in this city pinching politicians, frustrate transit here.) and on this career during a time But in the last decade, the city has welcomed of growth, prosperity, exuberant buildings, including Will Alsop’s and peace.” playful Sharp Centre, Frank Gehry’s ago reno, and Maki Fumihiko’s Aga Khan Museum. LEW Co-chair KEVIN HARPER To its credit, Toronto has long taken cheer- RUSSELL MATHEW Toronto Rehab ful pride in the heterogeneous, multicultural Hemson Consulting Foundation neighbourhoods that Jane Jacobs evangelized, Born Edmonton; Born in Methodist to Hogtown in 1983. but is just starting to admit adult angst about Rome. Returned “I wanted to live near “to escape the hell the ones that aren’t working so well. We’re confi- Queen and Spadina, of suburban life. dent we’re alleviating social problems through the coolest corner in My partner hates redevelopment in Regent Park, but not sure Canada. Everyone it, but Toronto’s not we can repeat that success in the inner suburbs wore black all the time.” a bad place at all.” of Malvern or Jane-Finch. In Toronto, the downtown thrives without much fuss, but the ADRIAN LITAVSKI suburbs keep us up at night. Johnston Litavski Born in The 6ix. “As a When Stephen Marche described Toronto child, riding in the car as pubescent in The Guardian, he also called along the Gardiner, it “the most fascinating totally boring city I would press my face in the world.” Welcome to LEW Toronto 2016 — against the window, #lailew to those on social media—hosted engrossed by the lights, the activity. I by the Simcoe Chapter of LAI. This weekend, still want to do that.” we’ll prove Marche is at least partly wrong. LEW Co-chair DAVID MCKAY LESLIE YAGER MHBC Retired lawyer Born London, Ont.; Born Washington, DC; to T-dot in 1991. “This to Turonno in 1969. city is my home; it’s “Vietnam had a big where I belong. It can impact on me. Canada feel big, busy, and had become a haven dynamic. Just a few for protesters and minutes later, it’s draft dodgers.” small-town friendly.”

Fall 2016 LEW Guide 3 DAY 01 TD CENTRE / FINANCIAL DISTRICT

If opening the St Lawrence Seaway in 1959 created an upstream flow of economic power from rue Saint-Jacques 8:00 AM in Montreal to in Continental breakfast Toronto’s Financial District, Le Germain Hotel the 1976 election of a separatist Quebec government signifi- 8:30 – 10 AM cantly goosed the current. LAI Executive Committee In between those events, the Meeting Toronto Dominion Bank hired architect Ludwig Mies van 10 AM – Noon der Rohe to design a new head- LAI Chapter Presidents’ quarters at King and Bay. The Roundtable complex is the largest Mies in the world and was his last LEF Board Meeting major commission. Like the Seagram Building President’s Noon – 1 PM in New York, these buildings Lunch are classics of Mies’s disci- Reception plined International Style— Join LAI President Steven 1 – 4:30 PM restrained, ordered and rigor- Gragg and Simcoe Chapter LAI Board of Governors & LEF ously detailed. Their style President Bronwyn Krog for Board of Trustees Meeting influenced other Toronto struc- the opening of the Fall 2016 tures, and the retail concourse Land Economics Weekend. 1 – 4:30 PM below was the origin of the This event (business casual LEW registration PATH system, which links major attire) will be hosted by Le Germain Hotel buildings and the transit sys- McCarthy Tétrault, one of tem throughout downtown. Canada’s leading law firms, LEW BEGINS As you cross the plaza on the 53rd floor of the at King and Bay (the TD Bank landmark TD Bank Tower. 6 – 7:30 PM Tower is on the south side), look It’s a short cab ride or ten- President’s Reception for two Miesian hallmarks— minute walk east along King McCarthy Tétrault precisely articulated corners Street from the hotel. 53rd Floor, TD Bank Tower and I-beam window mullions. King and Bay streets From the building’s 53rd floor, the core looks more crowded Please check in at the TD than when this tower opened Bank Tower security desk for a half-century ago, but the view access to the elevators. remains spectacular.

Fall 2016 LEW Guide 5 DAY 02 3 LEW TALKS

EGLINTON AVE Results of our experiment russell mathew, partner, hemson consulting Toronto is a modern experiment in large-scale, international 2 immigration, comparable in that respect to New York City at the turn of the last century. Now the sixth-most populous metro- 8:00 am politan area in North America, Toronto is also Canada’s centre Continental breakfast of banking and business activity and English Canada’s media Le Germain Hotel [h] and arts capital.

8:30 – 10:45 am Toronto: an accidental metropolis LEW Talks on the Toronto joe berridge, partner, urban strategies region’s growth and its unre- Somehow our provincial no-account town has become one of the lenting real estate boom top dozen global urban centres, with no federal or provincial— and certainly no municipal—policy intention. How did this happen, 11:00 – Noon and what do we do now? Toronto’s resistance to big ideas may BLOOR ST Tour of TIFF Bell Lightbox be an indulgence we can no longer afford. West at John [1] Tall new buildings Noon – 1:30 pm Mark Conway, Partner, NBLC YONGE ST YONGE Lunch Back in 2010, nearly half of North America’s high-rise construction Restaurant suggestions, p. 8 was in Toronto; the cranes are still swinging today. The condo market DON PKWYVALLEY is, the joke goes, in the 15th year of a five-year cycle. Is the mar- 1 2:00 – 3:30 pm ket’s strength dependent on government policy, limited land supply, offshore investment, or the urban orientation of millennials? KING ST Neighbourhood tour and talk: Thorncliffe Park [2] Retail therapy 4:00 – 5:30 pm briar DE lange, executive director, bloor-yorkville BIA h Tour of Aga Khan Museum Yorkville, once a sleepy village suburb and then a ’60s hippie hang- 77 Wynford Drive [3] out, is now an upmarket residential and shopping area. The Business Improvement Association’s ambitious streetscape improvement Y T O R O N T O B A 5:30 pm plan for Bloor Street has reinvigorated Toronto’s “Mink Mile” as a Dinner pedestrian-oriented retail destination. Diwan Restaurant, Aga Khan Museum Growth in a liveable future jennifer keesmaAt, chief planner, city of toronto Toronto is in the midst of an urban boom and an unprecedented ACCESS THE influx of residents and jobs. By 2041, the downtown population is projected to nearly double, placing strain on undersized and COMPLETE MAP outdated infrastructure. To maintain the liveability of our city, we www.bit.ly/LEW2016 need new, bold, and proactive responses to these pressures.

Fall 2016 LEW Guide 7 DAY 02 1 TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX 2 THORNCLIFFE PARK 3 AGA KHAN MUSEUM

1 TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX Lunch

From its first run in 1976 After the TIFF Bell Lightbox through its growth into the tour, venture on your own for “most influential film festival, lunch. Here are a few nearby period” (Time, 2007), the Tor- options, including two in onto International Film Festival the Lightbox. Buses leave was an event without a home. Le Germain Hotel at 1:45 pm That changed in 2010, when for the afternoon’s activities. the tiff Bell Lightbox opened canteen 330 King St W in the Entertainment District. Casual spot with a varied, $e 42-storey, mixed-use com- trend-conscious menu. $$$ plex includes 547,000 sq. %. of luma 330 King St W flexible space in a five-storey Multicultural dishes and podium, with the 373-unit great street views. $$$ Festival Tower condominium fred’s not here 321 King above. The podium, facing St W Lively neighbourhood King Street, houses five cine- steak and pizza joint. $$ mas, tiff’s administrative milagro 5 Mercer St offices, a film reference library, Authentic Mexican cuisine, and galleries. Its dramatic extensive tequila list. $$ roo%op terrace was inspired by pai 18 Duncan St Northern Godard’s 1963 film Contempt. Thai menu, casual setting. $$

8 Fall 2016 LEW Guide Thorncliffe Park today and in 1960

If you’re a film festival in and, in 1975, provincial rent need of a prominent site, who control. Building owners you gonna call? Director and neglected maintenance, and pr0ducer Ivan Reitman (yes, for 40 years, private rental he directed the original Ghost- construction nosedived. busters). His parents, post-war In the 1980s climate of fed- immigrants and Holocaust sur- eral high-immigration policy vivors from Czechoslovakia, and gentrification of inner city had purchased a property on houses, immigrants began King Street in 1960, operating settling in the now-affordable a car wash there. The Reitman tower clusters, including Thorn- family donated the land to cliffe Park. By 2011, 65 per cent TIFF, but more money would be of its residents were recent needed to complete the Light- immigrants, predominantly of box. In large part, the fund- South Asian origin and pre- ing came from the joint venture dominantly Muslim. with Daniels Corporation to Thorncliffe’s original devel- develop Festival Tower. opers, however, had assumed a 1950s monocultural commu- nity, one where wives drove to 2 THORNCLIFFE the grocery store and husbands PARK worked in the nearby indus- trial area. Times have changed; Two patterns overlap in can the tower-cluster neigh- Thorncliffe Park, a 1960s neigh- bourhoods adapt? bourhood built on a former racetrack: rental market history INSIGHTS and immigrant settlement choices. In the suburbs of post- arrival city The social and war Toronto, developers built demographic hallmarks of clusters of high-rises in a fre- Thorncliffe Park echo those in quency and density unique other arrival cities—communi- in North America. Not public ties of recent immigrants that housing, these were private change quickly as newcomers rental buildings (only one in launch themselves into the Thorncliffe is publicly owned). mainstream. We’ll learn more Tax policy, planning theory about this phenomenon from and consumer demand gave Doug Saunders, author of life to the apartment clusters; Arrival City: The Final Migration the bust came with a 1972 and Our Next World and inter- change in income tax laws, fol- national affairs columnist for lowed by rapid rent increases .

10 Fall 2016 LEW Guide Fall 2016 LEW Guide 11 !e gardens of the Aga Khan Museum

tower renewal Toronto’s Pritzker-winning architect tower clusters are aging, and Fumihiko Maki did not disap- the needs and demographics point. !e building’s exterior is of their residents are shifting. monolithic yet welcoming; light Tower renewal does more than plays across the interior, over update systems and fnishes; textured surfaces and through the process aims to reshape screens, animating the com- neighbourhoods with, for exam- pact and exceptional collection ple, residential and commer- of Islamic artifacts. The white cial infill to make better use granite museum is comple- of the spaces between towers. mented by its formal landscape Graeme Stewart of ERA Archi- design, a contemporary take tects will discuss this import- on Persian gardens, and the ant initiative. adjacent Ismaili Centre. A"er touring the museum, we’ll dine at Diwan on the main 3 AGA KHAN floor. The menu, created by MUSEUM celebrity chef Mark McEwan, showcases Middle Eastern, When Ismaili Muslims (and North African and South Asian others of Asian descent) were cuisine in a room that features expelled from Uganda by Idi hand-carved antique wooden Amin in 1972, their spiritual panels, evoking the luxury of leader, the Aga Khan, appealed a 19th-century Syrian home. to the Canadian government for help. About 6,000 refugees came in the first wave, estab- Late night lishing an Ismaili community and cementing Canada’s rela- In the Entertainment District, there are dozens tionship with the Aga Khan. of bars, nightclubs and restaurants, all an easy On two suburban Toronto walk from Le Germain Hotel. properties he had assembled by wayne gretsky’s 99 Blue Jays Way Sports 2002, the Aga Khan proposed bar showcasing No. 99’s hockey memorabilia. creating a museum of Islamic bar hop 391 King St W Large selection of art and culture. Heritage groups craft brews and late-night pub fare. wanted to save the modernist montecito 299 Adelaide St W Seasonal Cali- Bata Shoe Building already fornian from director-producer Ivan Reitman. there, but the museum project 370 Queen St W From was widely seen as sacrificing Loretta Lynn to the Stones and Arcade Fire, a building of moderate interest everyone’s played this legendary watering hole. for something of far greater mascot brewery 31 Mercer St Craft beer potential value. and handmade cocktails.

12 Fall 2016 LEW Guide DAY 03 LEW TALKS

The university is expanding Elisabeth Stroback, Former Executive Lead, EGLINTON AVE and Nic de Salaberry, director, Capital Projects and 8:15 am Real Estate, Ryerson University Continental breakfast In recent years, Ryerson University has stepped up its public profile Le Germain Hotel [h] and physical presence with large, visible projects on major down- town streets, including a unique partnership with food retailer 8:45 – 10:15 am Loblaw in the historic and the distinctive and LEW Talks including recent gregarious Student Learning Centre on . projects on the waterfront and at Ryerson University The shore thing John Campbell, former President and CEO, 10:45 – Noon Waterfront Toronto Walking tour to St Lawrence In 2001, three levels of government agreed to create an agency Market, led by LAI members that would lead and coordinate the revitalization of Toronto’s lakeshore—a 25-year, 800-hectare project. With projects such

BLOOR ST 12:30 – 1:30 pm as a spectacular boardwalk linking new parks and big-picture Learn about St Lawrence changes such as opening a half-dozen new districts for invest- Market, home of the ment and growth, Waterfront Toronto has already made waves. peameal bacon sandwich

YONGE ST YONGE 246 Sackville Street [4] POPS culture 5 James Parakh, Urban Design Manager, City of Toronto

DON PKWYVALLEY 1:30 – 2:30 pm As density increases in the urban core, creating new public spaces Neighbourhood tour and talk: and amenities becomes more necessary, yet more challenging. 4 Regent Park revitalization [5] How does Toronto’s municipal government work with developers KING ST to provide plazas, play spaces, art installations and other Privately 3:00 – 4:00 pm Owned Publicly accessible Spaces (POPS)? What role do they play Visit Corktown Common in the liveable city? 6 Bayview Avenue and Lower h River Street [6] Office moves Christopher White, associate partner, urbanmetrics

Y The suburbanization of Toronto’s office market in the 1980s was T O R O N T O B A 6:30 pm Awards Dinner followed by the city’s lost decade of the ’90s, when almost no Horizons Restaurant, office space was built. In the last ten years, however, the market CN Tower focus has shifted downtown, with a dramatic resurgence in office development. How long can the trend continue? ACCESS THE COMPLETE MAP www.bit.ly/LEW2016

Fall 2016 LEW Guide 15 DAY 03 4 ST LAWRENCE MARKET 5 REGENT PARK 6 CORKTOWN COMMON

TO MARKET, TO MARKET

The historic development of largest of Canada’s château- Toronto’s core follows the paths style railway hotels, dominated and fortunes of the railways. As Toronto’s skyline for 40 years we walk to St Lawrence Market, until the TD Centre was built. guided by LAI members, we’ll cross former railway lands along We’ll pass through Brookfeld Wellington Street, redeveloped Place and Santiago Calatrava’s in the 1980s and ’90s, and pass stunning parabolic Galleria; in , home of the the same complex is the Hockey Toronto Symphony. Hall of Fame. From there, we’ll cross Yonge Street. Facing Heading south on University is a stretch of 1870s (one of our few grand avenues) commercial buildings with cast- and then east on , iron facades, rare in . we’ll pass a pairing found in Their site was created in the many Canadian cities: the train 1860s when the railways fin- station and the railway hotel. anced a harbour infill (many , already the parts of Toronto’s waterfront busiest transportation facility were similarly expanded). The in Canada, is in the midst of a small park is also the backyard major expansion that will double of the much-photographed its capacity. The Royal York, the .

16 Fall 2016 LEW Guide Regent Park pool protest, 1969; Aquatic Centre, 2012

4 ST LAWRENCE iconic foods, peameal bacon MARKET on a bun (with vegetarian and pork-free options). Peameal For 210 years, in a series of bacon is a cured and cooked buildings, there have been food boneless loin that’s rolled in markets near Jarvis and Front cornmeal (originally ground streets; there now is yellow peas). Back bacon is the the world’s best, according to same cut, but is smoked. Wil- National Geographic. Although liam Davies, a 19th-century St Lawrence Market includes St Lawrence vendor, is credited three buildings, when locals with peameal bacon’s invention advise ge!ing to the market by and the birth of the Canadian 7 am on a Saturday, they really pork industry. Later this after- mean the South Market. It noon, we’ll see his company’s opened in 1902; by 1971, city legacy in Corktown. planners felt it should be torn down, perhaps for a handy parking garage. But the public 5 REGENT PARK in the early ’70s was in a fight- ing mood. Activists had taken Heard this story before? on planners and developers Reformers, planners and poli- over , Holy Trin- ticians rally public support ity Church, and the Spadina to replace a dangerous, decay- Expressway—and won each ing slum with a new planned time. They won this bout too. community. In 1947, Toronto Now it’s the underused voters approved a plan to raze North Market’s turn, but no what was then called Cabbage- one is fighting to keep the utili- town for 28 hectares of low-rise tarian 1968 building. The pro- public housing in open lawns, posed replacement features a a bright, airy neighbourhood five-storey-high covered street, laced with walking paths linking the South Market and instead of the old street grid. St Lawrence Hall, with court- Regent Park, completed rooms on the upper floors. over the next decade, showed "e ghosts of planners past are initial success. But no street finally getting their parking grid meant poor public transit, garage, albeit underground. no street life, and li!le retail or We’ll learn more about the commercial activity. "e open market’s history and redevelop- spaces—neither public nor pri- ment from market historian vate—devolved into no-man’s Bruce Bell. And for lunch, we’ll land that nurtured crime and experience one of the market’s gangs. Rental revenues, a mix

Fall 2016 LEW Guide 19 Corktown Common

of deep subsidy, rent geared 6 CORKTOWN to income and low-end market COMMON rent, couldn’t pay for mount- ing maintenance costs. In 1879, the William Davies In the mid-2000s, Toronto Company—which started in Community Housing Corpora- St Lawrence Market—opened tion started a 20-year, $1 bil- a state-of-the-art pork process- lion project to redevelop Regent ing factory in Corktown. The Park into an intensified, mixed- second-largest such facility in use, mixed-ownership com- North America, it processed munity, in partnership with a hogs through the 1920s, until private developer. Selling mar- changing markets and a corpo- ket condo sites would help off- rate merger pushed the opera- set the cost of replacing the old tion out. Eventually, the site units and infrastructure with was left an empty brownfield. affordable rental apartments It was a floodplain too, so in and townhouses. There would 2007, Waterfront Toronto be new retail spaces, cultural began building a flood protec- institutions and sports facili- tion landform to safeguard ties. To minimize disruption of 210 hectares of the city (as far the existing community, TCHC west as the Financial District) would help residents move from a Don River flood. After years of avoidance, city of the West Don Lands area by into interim units during con- The berm became Corktown council agreed to nudge a por- announcing it would be the site struction and offer them first Common, a park designed by tion northward, opening up of the 2015 Pan Am Games refusal on new units. The ongo- Michael Van Valkenburgh Asso- development opportunities. athletes’ village. Amanda Santo ing community consultation ciates. Like nearby Underpass Nearby, the mouth of the Don of Waterfront Toronto will process is extensive and reveal- Park, the Common (winner of will be restored to a more natu- explain the neighbourhood’s ing. Residents have told TCHC the 2013 LAI International Sky- ral state. Looking west, we’ll rapid transition from brown- they have no interest in living line Award) adapts urban infra- see the new Canary District and, field to mixed-use community. in an architectural showcase; structure for recreation. This across the river, East Harbour. they just want a normal, func- rolling mix of hills, fields, This major office development east harbour It’s Canada’s tioning neighbourhood. marsh, and urban prairie will relies on improved rail links— largest current commercial We’ll hear two perspec- become a hub for bike and the same project that is prompt- project—12 million sq. ft. for tives on how the Regent Park walking paths linking the Don ing the renos at Union Station. 50,000 workers on a 24-hectare revitalization came together Valley to the rest of the city. site—a secondary downtown and how well it’s working. The Common overlooks INSIGHTS office centre (akin to Canary Kelly Skeith, Senior Develop- developments that will reshape Wharf in London) that will rely ment Manager for TCHC, will the eastern edge of downtown. canary district If it needs on new commuter-rail and sub- give an overview of the proj- There’s the contentious Gar- to get done fast, set a firm way connections to the Finan- ect; community volunteers diner Expressway, south of the deadline and plan a big party. cial District. Derek Goring of will lead us on a tour of their park. Should it be bulldozed, In 2009, Waterfront Toronto First Gulf, the project’s devel- neighbourhood. buried, moved, or maintained? accelerated redevelopment oper, will fill us in.

20 Fall 2016 LEW Guide DAY 03 CN TOWER

On its opening in 1976, the 553-metre CN Tower was the Closing world’s tallest freestanding reception structure. It kept that record for 34 years and its name even & awards longer—Torontonians balked when the federal finance min- dinner ister suggested selling nam- ing rights in 2008. Its origins LEW Toronto 2016 wraps up are mostly practical: as each at the CN Tower’s Horizons new, reflective skyscraper was Restaurant with command- finished in the ’60s and ’70s, ing sunset views of the entire television and radio signals in city. Three awards will be grew less presented: the Skyline Award reliable. CN, one of Canada’s 2016 for a project or policy two major railway companies, demonstrating excellence in decided to build a transmitter land economics, the Interna- so tall, no skyscraper would tional Member of the Year interfere. And, like a sportscar 2016 for individual commit- in a mid-life crisis, this tower ment and achievement in the would prove CN’s vigour. feld, and the Urban Afairs The CN Tower was origi- Award 2015 for individual nally part of “Metro Centre,” contributions to urban afairs. a redevelopment plan for rail- way lands held by CN and CP. Credits Two years into the tower’s con- editor Martin Zibauer. designer struction, however, the scheme Vicki Hornsby. photography tiff, was scuttled when heritage cover, 9; Canadian Architectural groups prevented the demoli- Archives, University of Calgary (Panda tion of Union Station. The Associates fonds, pan 74236-4c, pan CN Tower was left isolated in 60124-3), 4, 10; Tom Arban/Courtesy a neglected area of light indus- 9 10 kpmb, ; Flavel Halais, ; Janet try. Tourists made their way Kimber/Courtesy Aga Khan Museum, to the tower, and eventually the 13; Courtesy boatel.ca, 17; Angela city did too, as major projects Leung/foodpunk.ca, 17; Shai Gil/ including the Metro Conven- Courtesy mjma, 18; York University Libraries, Clara Thomas Archives & tion Centre (1984), SkyDome Special Collections (Toronto Telegram (1989, now ), fonds, asc33051), 18; Connie Tsang/ Canadian Broadcasting Centre Courtesy Waterfront Toronto, 21; Clif- (1992), and Ripley's Aquarium ton Li/Courtesy Tourism Toronto, 23. (2013) were completed nearby.

22 Fall 2016 LEW Guide LAI LAND ECONOMICS WEEKEND TORONTO MHBC PLANNING URBAN DESIGN & LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE