Alexandra Park redevelopment brings residents into the planning process

theglobeandmail.com
By Dave LeBlanc
Oct. 20, 2016

Right now, Vanauley Street is a time machine.

On the west side, just north of Queen Street West, the mid-1960s version of “public housing,” Alexandra Park’s meandering blocks of townhouses and mid-rise buildings built from sturdy, dark brown brick, are now surrounded by piles of dirt. Designed to be inward-looking rather than align to the street, the six-hectare, park-like site was the latest in urban thinking – it won a national design award in 1967 - a half-century ago. Today, the banded windows and welcoming doorways drawn by Jerome Markson, Jack Klein and Henry Sears, and WZMH Architects, are covered over with plywood, and the pedestrian pathways are littered with scraps of metal and chunks of concrete.

Past the caution tape and construction vehicles, however, the east side of Vanauley represents the future, as envisioned by LGA Architectural Partners. Here, tricycles and barbeques front a row of brand new, reddish-grey brick townhouses with bright white and sunny yellow window pop-outs and rhythmic concrete porches; unlike their predecessors, these snap rigidly to the street grid.

And that’s the first clue that thinking has changed in a half-century, says architect Dean Goodman: “I think we realized that we do need streets: People like streets, and they’re safe, [and residents] want to have a front porch and all that kind of stuff.”

So, instead of placing buildings in the park, the new Alexandra Park will feature a big, central park that will be visible from the street. Call it New Urbanism; call it “eyes on the street.”

Two things both sides of the street do share: brick and basements. When budgets were cut and the builder offered up stucco as a cost-saving measure, Toronto Community Housing Corp. insisted on full brick buildings. And when residents - who were involved in the reimagination of “Alex Park” from the get-go, insisted on basements, the TCHC agreed despite not offering them in projects elsewhere.

“That is all of the slush-space for work, and for kids and for teenagers,” Mr. Goodman says, “so that’s part of the reason [the townhouses] are raised up, to get light in.”

A basement suits Waseem Tahir’s needs. An Alex Park resident since 2004, the father of four is thankful for every square foot of his new four-bedroom town home, especially the upgrade to two full bathrooms and a little powder room. “In rush hour, everybody [was] in line,” he jokes. His wife loves the much bigger kitchen, where there’s room for a full-height freezer beside the fridge, and the little formal dining space where the family can gather over traditional curries.

“My wife told me: ‘Waseem, I’m so happy in [our] new home; for 10 years I cooked food in a detention centre,’” he says.

But the one thing that really blows Mr. Tahir’s mind? The exhaust fan over the stove: “When you have to cook and you have to open the windows even when it’s minus 25 outside …” he says, trailing off while proudly switching the unit on. He points back to the living room and smiles, saying that the open concept floor plan means his family can “be united” while still occupied with different after-work and after-school tasks.

It is, perhaps, that TCH doled out the different tasks of neighbourhood-building to different groups that the new Alex Park is shaping up to be so successful. Not only is the award-winning and sustainably-minded LGA-AP (formerly Levitt-Goodman) handling the design of the townhouses, and Teeple Architects taking care of the mid-rise towers, builder Tridel is handling construction. And, since the very beginning, a working group made up of residents, Mr. Tahir included, worked with then-councillor Adam Vaughan and others to ensure all interests and requirements were met.

“Relocation is a big process, big hassle,” says Mr. Tahir, who has been on the Atkinson Co-op board for a decade “You have to be involved, you have to know what’s going on.” (Alexandra Park was the first public housing project in Canada to convert to self-management as Atkinson Co-operative).

“Even the urban design plan was voted on by the residents,” Mr. Goodman adds. “There were multiple ideas and the residents voted on which one they liked.”

As with the new Regent Park taking shape in the east end of downtown, the new Alex Park will feature 1,540 market-price condominiums mixed in with the rent-geared-to-income units. Where there was once unsupervised and forgotten space, there will be new streets that connect back to the old grid. Mr. Tahir’s son, Fahad Waseem, admits that some areas in the old 1960s layout used to be “pretty dodgy. When you were walking, you had to be alert.”

Is it naive to suggest that good architecture and planning can improve lives? Can it transform a “dodgy” and shady neighbourhood into one that’s sunny and safe? The early Modernists of the 1920s thought so; many wrote manifestos and treatises on the subject. Today, we’re not so sure. Most think that architecture can only take us so far, and the rest is up to the people who use it every day.

“Involve the people,” Mr. Tahir says. “Canada is still a new country, we’re making our shape. These are the architects, but we need to make a beautiful shape.”