Fort York Neighbourhood Public Realm Plan

Address: Lake Shore Blvd./Fleet St./Dan Leckie Way/Fort York Blvd./Angelique St.
Landscape Architects/Urban Designers/Planners: DuToit, Allsopp, Hillier
Architects/Urban Designers: Quadrangle Architects and Page & Steele Architects
Municipal Servicing: IBI Group
Transportation Planning and Engineering: BA Group
Clients: Wittington Properties Limited, Plazacorp Investments, Malibu Investments

Project Description

The Fort York Neighbourhood will be a high-density, primarily residential community, with a range of building types including stacked townhouses and mid-rise buildings forming the street edges, as well as slender point towers in specific locations. All buildings will be grade-related and address the streets. Building bases will be designed with pedestrians in mind, through such elements as multiple entrances, appropriate setbacks/step-backs, landscape development, architectural detailing and active uses at street level.

The Gardiner Expressway is about five storeys high and six lanes wide in this stretch, presenting a provocative opportunity to create unusual canopied public open spaces without precedent in Toronto. In contrast, the neighbourhood streets are 'green' corridors aligned to provide views to and from the Fort, and the mews streets are scaled for intimacy and character. These streets will also be important public spaces, scaled down from city-wide standards, designed with sidewalk setbacks, tree plantings, and front yard landscaping.

There will be a new Link Park - as a central focus for local neighbourhood activities, and Gore Park - as a heavily planted green space, set within the Fort grounds and Coronation Park. New pedestrian and cycling connections will add to the existing network of trails and bikeways.

Jurors' Comments

The former industrial lands immediately east and south of Fort York, where Toronto began in 1793, is understandably one of Toronto's most historically and cultural sensitive areas. The Fort York neighbourhood public realm plan is the admirable result of an eight-month period of intensive, respectful consultation among landowners, city officials, interested citizens and others. This procedure offers an excellent example of public and private sector cooperation, mobilized to protect the interests of all those involved, and the public at large.