Our Waterfront—Progress Report

April 3, 2014

Our Waterfront—Progress Report

Chairman: Noble Chummar, President, The Empire Club of Canada

Head Table Guests

M.J. Perry, Vice-President and Owner, Mr. Discount Ltd., and Director, The Empire Club of Canada;

Captain Philip C. Ralph, National Program Director, Wounded Warriors Canada;

Robert A. Howald, Senior Vice-President, Real Estate, Canada Lands Company;

Mark Cowie, Executive Vice-President, Colliers International;

Jeffrey Brown, Executive Vice-President, Chief Strategy Officer, Porter Airlines;

Dr. Gordon K. McIvor, Executive Director, National Executive Forum on Public Property, and 3rd Vice-President, The Empire Club of Canada;

Bud Purves, CEO, York University Development Corporation; and

David Gerofsky, CEO, First Gulf Corporation.

Introduction by Noble Chummar

For thousands of years, the area known today as the City of Toronto has been used by its inhabitants primarily for its proximity to Lake Ontario. Since the arrival of European settlers in the 18th century, the City of Toronto has transformed from a trading post off the Humber River to one of the largest cities in North America. Toronto and Torontonians are proud of many things—our safe neighbourhoods, our exceptional quality of life, our parks, our world-class tourist attractions, our ethnic and cultural diversity, restaurants, bars and festivals. We have it all. One of the greatest aspects of our great city is that it also sits on the northern shore of a calm and beautiful great lake. The Vice-President of the Empire Club, Dr. Gordon McIvor, reminded us last week that at this very podium in 1951, the famous Canadian politician, C.D. Howe, addressed the club and spoke about the potential of Toronto’s waterfront and the access to the then proposed St. Lawrence Seaway.

Today, over 50 years later, we are delighted to have our guest speaker address the club on the progress report of Toronto’s waterfront revitalization.

John Campbell is the CEO of Waterfront Toronto. He has a lifetime of experience with real estate development and urban transformation. As an executive with Brookfield Properties, Mr. Campbell oversaw the development and preservation efforts of Brookfield Place. Mr. Campbell has spent over a decade concentrating his efforts on transforming and enhancing our city’s waterfront. Please join me in welcoming Mr. John Campbell to our podium to provide us with a progress report on Toronto’s waterfront.

John Campbell

It’s a pleasure to speak to the Empire Club today. I’m always grateful for the opportunity to talk about what Waterfront Toronto is doing and why we think it’s so important to this city. I’m here today to bring you a progress report on the work we’re doing, but also to view that work through the lens of economic growth and competitiveness.

At the half-way mark of our 20-year mandate, we are making great strides in revitalizing our city’s waterfront. Derelict former industrial sites and bleak parking lots have been replaced by extraordinary places to live, work, play and learn.

But revitalization is not necessarily the only goal for us. One of Waterfront Toronto’s primary objectives is to leverage our work to deliver key economic benefits. These benefits enable Toronto to compete aggressively with other top-tier global cities for investment, jobs and people. We are, in effect, using an infrastructure project to deliver a competitive economic model for Toronto.

So let me be clear: Waterfront revitalization is good for the economy.

At heart, what we are doing is both revitalizing Toronto’s waterfront and supporting the kind of physical and human infrastructure that leads to sustainable economic growth. The same kind of growth that has seen Toronto become a top-tier global city. Being in the company of cities like New York, San Francisco, Paris and Hong Kong means understanding what makes these cities successful and understanding how to meet the challenges of building great communities where people want to live, where businesses want to invest and where people want to visit. And, how to build these communities in an innovative way—with the best approaches from around the world to ensure excellence in design, sustainability, development, technology and livability. And how to build the right infrastructure into each community so that it provides a solid foundation for long term and high-value economic growth; infrastructure like transit, parks and public spaces, and high speed and accessible broadband.

From inception Waterfront Toronto decided to take a global best-practices approach to building our new waterfront communities. We looked at cities, which had successfully revitalized their waterfronts and saw how that success translated, in many cases, into a rebranding of those cities’ global profile. We knew that we could do no less on our waterfront and that we had the opportunity of almost 2,000 acres of land with which to do that. And it almost goes without saying—Toronto’s economic health is also Ontario’s and Canada’s economic health; this city represents almost half of Ontario’s GDP and about 20 per cent of Canada’s GDP.

But that’s a high-level view. To better understand the economic contribution that Waterfront Toronto is providing, let me walk you through an update of some of our key projects. Then, I want to talk about how they are supporting Toronto’s economic health and competitiveness. We’re going to go west to east, just to keep you oriented.

Let’s start with Ontario Place Park on the eastern side of Ontario Place. Although the park is being developed by the Ontario Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport, Waterfront Toronto has been supporting this project through our experience of combining robust public consultation with world-class design. This approach is helping to make a great park that will attract both residents and visitors and represent the essence of Ontario. This park is the first step in the revitalization of Ontario Place, one of the province’s most iconic and beloved waterfront spaces. Moving east, we come to Queens Quay. Waterfront Toronto is leading a coordinated construction effort that integrates improvements to the public realm with much needed infrastructure and utility upgrades. That will mean no further work on or under the road is needed for decades. I’ll be honest. It’s not the best-looking spot in the city right now. It’s been a tough project; we’re building on fill of what amounts to soup. And, we’ve had lots of challenges in rebuilding all of the underground infrastructure; and the winter we’ve just had did not help. Nonetheless, it’s on schedule to be completed next summer, when it will become a beautiful waterfront boulevard—a real showpiece. It will be a huge improvement on a street that was an ugly and unbalanced traffic corridor. Canadian Landscape Magazine called it the ugliest urban waterfront boulevard around.

The new Queens Quay will have transit, bike paths, pedestrian spaces, new parks, beautiful wave decks, a water’s-edge promenade and great public spaces to attract visitors. I’m predicting that the new Queens Quay will be our signature street linking major destinations along the water’s edge and creating a vibrant atmosphere.

Moving on towards Yonge Street, where Waterfront Toronto and the City are working to develop the Lower Yonge Precinct. It will be a new location in the heart of downtown but, as it will be home to thousands of residents and new businesses, it needs to be planned and developed with care. So in doing that, we must ensure that we don’t repeat old mistakes—just putting up development without any regard for creating sustainable, livable, vibrant communities.

Waterfront Toronto wants to develop a vision for parks and public space and an understanding of what private development should look like in this area. The goal here, again, is to help create a new community that will support accessible downtown living and that is appropriate in scale and form. As I am fond of saying, great cities are defined by their public realm, not just by their buildings. Moving east along Queens Quay, we have big changes underway in East Bayfront, starting with two new great parks to anchor this neighbourhood.

Sugar Beach is a great combination of park, beach and vantage point overlooking the Redpath Sugar Refinery. Sugar Beach has become an instant hit; there are few better places in Toronto from which to see the old and the new, the industrial and the modern, the lake and the city. It is a front-row seat to the “theatre of the harbour”—and I’ve heard that area workers leave their desks every time a freighter pulls up to empty its cargo at Redpath.

Then there’s Sherbourne Common, where former industrial lands have been turned into a stunning waterfront park. It is a good example of Waterfront Toronto’s commitment to innovative infrastructure that incorporates public art. It’s also got sustainability built right in. The park does double-duty; it’s the first park in Canada to integrate a neighbourhood-wide stormwater treatment facility into its design. Next door are two new buildings: Corus Quay and George Brown College’s Centre for Health Sciences. George Brown is home to over 3,000 full-time students learning in an innovative, hands-on and sustainable environment. Some of the building’s features include a green roof and energy and water conservation measures, which are helping the college significantly reduce its footprint. And having students in this area helps to animate the waterfront year-round.

Next to Sugar Beach is Corus Quay—home of Corus Entertainment. Inside, you’ll find more than 1,000 highly skilled, creative employees that ensure there is a solid commercial presence in East Bayfront.

Linking the two buildings and the two parks together is the continuation of the water’s edge promenade. It’s a 30- metre lakeside strip featuring both a row of mature trees that shelter pedestrians from sun and wind, and a traditional boardwalk, open to the elements, that gives pedestrians full exposure to the lake.

Both of those buildings are focused on technology and innovation, which leads me to what will soon be their neighbour: the Waterfront Innovation Centre. This will be a purpose-built commercial facility that will provide tenants with a collaborative environment, characterized by a dynamic exchange of information, ideas and innovation. It will have a specialized digital infrastructure to respond to tenant needs—which I will tell you more about a bit later.

The parks and commercial activity in this area helps to anchor what will soon be a substantial residential development— Bayside. We’re confident it will be one of Toronto’s next great neighbourhoods—a vibrant and diverse mixed-use community and thriving waterfront destination.

Waterfront Toronto’s vision is for a residential area built on a human scale, with mews and small streets that promote a sense of closeness and community all year round, and also allow for microclimates, rather than large, wind-swept spaces.

When fully developed, East Bayfront will feature approximately 6,000 residential units and two million square feet of office and retail space. It will also be connected to the city by the East Bay- front Light Rapid Transit, which will be the most important east- west transit line servicing these new waterfront communities and future commercial development in the Portlands, such as the Unilever site on the other side of the Don River.

The East Bayfront LRT has gone through a full Environmental Assessment, and we are currently working with our government partners to secure funding for this project.

All of our planning and development work is based on having transit built into our new communities; it makes these communities more sustainable, more attractive and raises land values, which help to spur further investment and development.

Just to the northeast, we come to the West Don Lands. This is a new community that is taking shape fast— emerging from a thorough public consultative process that sets new standards for how to build a great community. The West Don Lands will be people-focused, environmentally sustainable and designed for urban living. It is a great transformation from its former industrial area into a sustainable, mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly, riverside community.

The key to unlocking the West Don Lands has been the massive flood protection landform on the east side of the area. It will protect more than 200 hectares of Toronto’s eastern downtown from flooding during a significant storm—including part of Toronto’s financial district. The unique topography provided by the landform has been used to build Corktown Common, a signature piece of the West Don Lands. It is—quite simply—a fantastic park that serves as the area’s centerpiece. The emerging West Don Lands will have:

A mix of housing to accommodate people at all income levels.

6,000 new residential units, commercial and employment space, at least one elementary school, and two child-care centres, all surrounded by over nine hectares of parks and public spaces.

And, it will have multiple transit options, giving it strong connections to other parts of the city, including pedestrian and cyclist-friendly streets.

It’s no wonder that the West Don Lands were selected to be the location of the Pan Am and Parapan Athletes’ Village.

And I would be remiss in not mentioning Underpass Park. It is a unique urban park that has transformed the derelict space beneath a series of road overpasses. Underpass Park re-engineers that space to deliver an inviting public playground that connects the two areas of the West Don Lands by removing the physical and psychological barrier created by the overpasses. It’s a park that perfectly represents the type of innovative and enjoyable spaces we seek to create—and that shows what can be done when you aim high.

Lastly, we come to the Port Lands. They represent an unprecedented opportunity. Few developed cities have the opportunity to revitalize a massive, 1,000-acre brownfield site this close to downtown.

Our vision for the Port Lands begins with a new river— the Don, released from its man-made boundaries, and allowed to become a naturalized river mouth. A naturalized Don River mouth will be the focus of a new waterfront park and the centre of a new, green community, connected to the waterfront and plugged into downtown. It will enhance water and land habitat for natural species and create the potential to re-establish wetlands in the areas that were lost 100 years ago. It will also provide flood protection for the Port Lands, South Riverdale and Leslieville areas, which are subject to some of the greatest flood risks in the city. It will be an urban port city, with a unique shipping channel that combines the historic industrial uses of a port with a sustainable community and modern commercial activity. That’s the vision for the Port Lands. So where are we in the process?

The Don Mouth and Lower Don Lands Environmental Assessments are almost finalized. We continue to work with the City and the Toronto Regional Conservation Authority on a Port Lands Planning Framework to guide development in the area, and detailed planning work on the adjacent Cousins Quay precinct and Film Studio District has begun.

So, that’s an update on our progress—but now let me turn to how all the work I’ve just described is contributing in a very tangible way to the economic development of this city.

Over the last decade, Toronto has moved into the global elite— competing with other cities across the world for jobs, investment and talent. So we should ask ourselves: what has made Toronto leap into this new category? What are some of the conditions that have allowed Toronto to grow and prosper in the last decade? And what is Waterfront Toronto doing to contribute to this?

For some guidance—and for some answers—I have turned to the Toronto Regional Board of Trade’s Scorecard on Prosperity. It’s an annual report produced with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario, and it ranks Toronto in third place against 23 other global cities. It shows what we are good at and where we need to improve.

Most of us know that Toronto is a great place to live— and increasingly people from all over the world are coming to the same conclusion.

In that regard, the Scorecard mentions two key factors that actually make us more competitive:

Building solid, modern infrastructure; and

Attracting human capital.

Now, Toronto is not perfect and that’s why we need to build on and improve both of these.

The 2014 Scorecard says: “We need to aggressively upgrade our aging yet essential infrastructure—our roads, bridges, water and wastewater systems. This increased capital outlay will not only generate employment, but will allow us to avoid much more costly problems when aging systems break down and wreak havoc.”

I couldn’t agree more. That’s why we’re delivering critical infrastructure in all of our projects—infrastructure that enables sustainable development.

For example, in redeveloping Queens Quay, we are rebuilding all of the underground services to provide power, water, sewage and telecommunications to the area. We’re building a dedicated transit corridor to separate the LRT from auto traffic and we are reconnecting the Martin Goodman Trail. As I’ve mentioned, Sherbourne Common is the first park in Canada to integrate an ultraviolet stormwater treatment facility into its design.

And Corktown Common sits upon a flood protection berm that works to protect huge parts of downtown Toronto from flooding. In a post-Calgary flood environment, the investment in this type of infrastructure is critical.

Waterfront Toronto also deals with remediation issues. Here again, we take an innovative approach to dealing with the contaminated soil that characterizes large-scale brownfield remediation. Wherever possible, we use the latest and best technologies to treat and reuse soil, rather than “digging and dumping,” which simply transfers the contamination and problems to somewhere else. We see soil recycling as an opportunity to turn contaminated soil into a resource instead of a liability and to add value to the land we are revitalizing.

And speaking of infrastructure, let’s not forget about digital infrastructure, which I referenced earlier when talking about our upcoming Innovation Centre. One of the initiatives that I am most excited about is our low-cost, open-access, ultra-broadband network—available to residents, businesses and visitors across our revitalization area.

Provided by Beanfield Metroconnect, it’s the first service of its kind in Canada and only the second in North America.

This is a critical and powerful support to Toronto’s growing knowledge economy. Our infrastructure delivers a competitive edge to businesses that need to attract and retain top talent. As people and companies migrate to our waterfront, they’ll form a hub of innovation and creativity that will benefit the economies of Toronto, Ontario and Canada.

Our waterfront communities will also feature a powerful community portal and platform—created in partnership with IBM and their partner Element Blue—to provide residents with social collaboration tools to connect with neighbours, businesses and service providers in the surrounding areas.

It will help them make smarter decisions about everything from the daily commute to their health and wellness and, in doing so, will create communities that will be among the most advanced in the world, setting a new precedent for smart city building.

The importance of this infrastructure cannot be overstated. These tools enable complex projects to be completed faster, buildings to run more efficiently, and residents to access a range of services and opportunities for social interaction.

Tellingly, three times in the last decade, Toronto has been named as one of the top-seven Intelligent Communities of the Year by the New York-based think tank, Intelligent Community Forum. This is effectively the shortlist for the prestigious Intelligent Community of the Year Award.

And, it’s important to note that property values are higher in areas where broadband is available. Of the more than 12,000 new residential units to be developed in the East Bayfront and West Don Lands, the additional real estate value generated by this initiative could amount to between $20 and $40 million.

These are just a few examples of how Waterfront Toronto is building modern infrastructure and adding tremendous economic value to the areas being revitalized. On the topic of attracting human capital, we are making the city an appealing place to work for the highly educated and skilled workers we need to keep our economy healthy and growing.

Creating a high-quality place is central to our mission. By ensuring our communities are highly sustainable, beautifully designed and connected, we are building new areas that people will want to call home. Our new communities are planned and designed to encourage active transportation such as walking and biking—helping to reduce dependency on the automobile and encourage public transportation. And, importantly, these communities are close to employment opportunities. That’s one reason why we have seen huge population growth in Toronto’s downtown at the same time that we have seen a growth in demand for livable downtown neighbourhoods.

I can’t emphasize enough how important this quality of life is to our city’s future. All of these factors, all of these elements, combine together to build the quality of life that is sought by talent and investment from all around the world.

Since I’m talking about economic growth, I should also point out that Waterfront Toronto is creating jobs. Thus far, our projects and investments have generated over 16,000 full-time years of employment. Our $1.2-billion investment to date has stimulated over $3 billion in total economic output to the Canadian economy. We have generated total government revenues of over $600 million. In addition, Waterfront Toronto has more than doubled the value of waterfront investment to date by attracting initial development projects valued at more than $2.6 billion to the first new waterfront neighbourhoods of East Bayfront and West Don Lands. And they will in turn generate over $800 million in government revenues. What’s more, our revitalization work has been, in part, a catalyst for more than $9.5 billion in private-sector investment and development outside the lands we directly oversee. Today, there are 44 recent and planned development projects on privately owned lands across the waterfront and in adjacent neighbourhoods close to where Waterfront Toronto has invested. The proximity of these private-sector developments to the essential community infrastructure—parks and public spaces, waterfront access, transit, flood protection and brownfield remediation— is creating significant value. They will contribute an additional $8.9 billion to the Canadian economy, almost 95,000 years of employment and $4.7 billion in labour income. And let’s not forget the government revenue of $3.4 billion that comes from this development.

And, we’re just getting started.

I’m also proud to say that Waterfront Toronto is a participant in the Waterfront Toronto Employment Initiative, which includes the City of Toronto, the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, labour unions, post-secondary institutions, the YMCA and other service providers. The program works with employers and job seekers to connect unemployed and underemployed Torontonians to the employment and training opportunities generated by waterfront revitalization projects.

Now, I should touch on some topical issues.

I’ll start with the Gardiner Expressway East and Waterfront Toronto’s support of the option to remove the section of the Gardiner between Jarvis and the Don Valley. There has been a focus on what the removal will mean to traffic, but in looking at the issue from an economic development perspective, the removal will unlock tremendous development opportunities, building new communities and employment areas with a great quality of place, and, in doing so, return hundreds of millions of dollars in land sale and development charge revenues to the city—revenues that can be reinvested to provide what the city desperately needs: transit.

It’s important to note that there is no perfect solution to problems like this—there are always trade-offs; in this case, between maintaining the expressway functionality and cost.

Ultimately, let’s be clear: Maintaining an elevated expressway doesn’t solve Toronto’s congestion problem. But, it will make a huge difference in the efforts to revitalize Toronto’s waterfront and help five new neighbourhoods reach their full potential. And that gives us the space and the infrastructure we need to accommodate the city’s future growth.

Let me also address the proposal to expand the Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport. As you know, Toronto City Council has voted to enter into negotiations with the Toronto Port Authority and Porter over extending the runway and introducing jets. This is a good decision. The Island Airport is a great asset, but we need to proceed prudently and make a careful decision on expansion. Waterfront Toronto’s main concern with the proposed expansion is not technology or airlines, but rather scale and balance. At what point does the airport cease to be compatible with a thriving waterfront and instead becomes a presence that overwhelms the waterfront?

We know that economic impact—the decision to live, work and invest in the waterfront—are interconnected to quality of life and the experience of coming to the waterfront. That is why we need to understand the many impacts of expansion very clearly. We must have the necessary information to make the right decision because that decision will have a generational impact. It could profoundly affect not only the efforts that have already been made to transform the waterfront, but also future revitalization prospects—and the economic growth that flows from that.

Great communities deliver what matters to people: close access to economic opportunities, amenities that support an active lifestyle, dynamic public spaces and parks that offer a superior quality of place and an exceptional experience of life in the diverse, modern city that is Toronto.

We need to continue to build these types of communities to attract an educated, diverse, skilled and mobile global work force that is attracted to the opportunities and high quality of life here. Protecting and strengthening the waterfront also leverages one of our city’s biggest assets: a beautiful, centrally located, accessible waterfront.

The transformed and revitalized waterfront will be home to over 100,000 residents and support 40,000 new jobs. The reinvestment in our waterfront is an engine for economic growth. When the vision for the waterfront is fully realized, it will provide lasting economic benefits for our city, province and country by creating new employment opportunities, attracting private investment and drawing tourism dollars.

As I said at the beginning of my talk, Waterfront Toronto is using an infrastructure project to deliver a more competitive economic model for Toronto—one that will continue to benefit our city for generations.

We’re not done yet—but the visible transformation of the waterfront is there for all to see as are the early benefits of our revitalization work. The waterfront belongs to all of us; its success is our collective success. We are very proud to be part of this extraordinary endeavour—one that is building a better city and a stronger economy.

Thank you.

The appreciation of the meeting was expressed by Dr. Gordon K. McIvor, Executive Director, National Executive Forum on Public Property, and 3rd Vice-President, The Empire Club of Canada.