Can the city fund two new downtown parks?
High cost of acquiring land in a greenspace-starved core may stymie at least one of two projects.

TheStar.com
Sept. 5, 2016
Jennifer Pagliaro

To build one large park dream, the city may have to sacrifice another.

The calculation over how to inject significant green space into the booming downtown core returns next week as the summer break draws to a close.

While the announcement of a new 21-acre park decked over the rail corridor was met with much fanfare earlier this season, the cost of building it is still an unknown.

Meanwhile, Councillor Joe Cressy, who represents the area of downtown that includes that land, had been pushing to build a new park on a much smaller scale — 0.65 acres — by expropriating a parking lot on Richmond St. near John St.

But ahead of a government management committee meeting Tuesday, Cressy says a recent appraisal has put the cost of acquiring that parcel higher than hoped. That would require dipping into a city-wide reserve fund dedicated to parkland, something that could bring pushback from other councillors.

Now Cressy says the rail deck park could take priority.

“This part of downtown Toronto needs a park and we’re going to get it,” the Ward 20 (Trinity-Spadina) councillor said Friday. “In an ideal world we’d do both.”

The cost of the Richmond St. land is being kept confidential ahead of a council decision on whether to acquire it.

Cressy wants staff to report back on funding options for the space in line with plans for the rail deck park, to allow council to make a choice, if necessary.

There are ward-specific funds, district funds (including for the downtown core or “south” district), and a city-wide fund that can only be used for acquiring lands for and developing new parks.

Developers pay into the funds in exchange for being allowed to build over the height and density guidelines set out by the city, a process that is governed by provincial legislation.

Mayor John Tory has backed early plans for a rail deck park as a legacy project despite few details being available on logistics and costs.

And he appears willing to push for the investment of city-wide funds in that project, with staff saying it will be a landmark destination for the whole city.

Staff will be reporting to executive committee later this month on the funding options for the rail deck park.

Until then, securing both parkland sites in the park-deficient core remains a financial question mark.

“There currently are not enough funds in city cash-in-lieu of parkland reserves to fund all needs,” staff wrote in a report ahead of the upcoming government management committee meeting.

But as the value of land downtown continues to rise, staff said the city is hard-pressed to make a decision soon.

“At what point does it become prohibitively too expensive to purchase land for parkland purposes?” the report reads.

Cressy said council must ask: “What is the best value for money?”