In a challenge to Mayor Rob Ford, Waterfront Toronto’s board chair says the agency will have no problem coming up with the money for flood protection in the Port Lands.Ford cited Waterfront Toronto’s supposed inability to fund the $634 million flood protection project as a main reason council should dismiss its plans for a Port Lands neighbourhood and put the city-owned Toronto Port Lands Company in charge of area development.
If Waterfront Toronto can provide a convincing funding plan, Ford and his brother, Councillor Doug Ford, will have a harder time selling their preferred Port Lands vision to council.
Board chair Mark Wilson said Tuesday Waterfront Toronto does not have the $634 million in hand, but would fund the project the same way similar ones are funded “all over the world”: borrowing against the hundreds of millions of dollars in increased land values and new tax revenue it will likely generate.
“There’s no question that the money is there to do it,” he told a news conference organized by one of Ford’s chief foes, Councillor Adam Vaughan.
Wilson noted Waterfront Toronto would need to be granted new borrowing authority by the federal, provincial and municipal governments, which oversee the agency.
Waterfront Toronto’s chief executive, John Campbell, is presenting its business plan for the Port Lands to Wilson’s board on Wednesday. He would not discuss its contents on Tuesday.
The Fords want the Toronto Port Lands Company to be given control of the site so development can be accelerated. And the budget chief, Councillor Mike Del Grande, noted that profits reaped from the company’s land sales go to the city rather than into Waterfront Toronto’s coffers.
Waterfront Toronto’s plan, chosen after an international competition, would create a mixed-use community with 12,500 condo units, 500,000 square feet of retail space and parks around the Don River.
The Toronto Port Lands Company’s preliminary proposal — not yet a “plan,” its chief executive stressed — is similar to the one put forth by Councillor Ford. Centrist and left-leaning councillors criticized the company for developing the proposal in private and without council’s approval.
Renderings of the proposal, presented to the mayor’s executive committee Tuesday by architect Eric Kuhne, include a large shopping centre and an elevated monorail connecting the area to Union Station. They also showed a network of connected parks, an “ice palace” sports facility in the former Hearn power generating station, an “innovation zone” with cheap office space for new businesses, a marina, ferris wheel and significant condo development.
Kuhne called the shopping centre a “retail-leisure town centre destination,” correcting a councillor who used the word “mall.”
“We’re not talking about building another Yorkdale Mall,” he said. “We’re not interested in building anything that looks like an aircraft carrier in a sea of parking.”
Mayor Ford said the Port Lands would be developed “in the next 10 years,” rather than 25 years under Waterfront Toronto’s plan. “I do not wanna wait a quarter of a century,” he said.
But under questioning from Vaughan, the Toronto Port Lands Company’s chief executive, Michael Kraljevic, acknowledged that the development would likely take 10 to 15 years, and possibly more depending on conditions in the real estate market. And the company’s proposal, which deals with flood protection differently than Waterfront Toronto’s plan, might require a new environmental assessment that could take years.
Wilson argued that development will happen fastest if the city sticks with the Waterfront Toronto plan.
Council will consider the Port Lands on Sept. 21.
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Source: Toronto Star
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