Councillor wants to turn heavily polluted land into a downtown park
Mike Layton tries to rally support at council on a rezoning proposal to turn land at Bathurst and Front Sts. into a park.

thestar.com
By BETSY POWELL
April 25, 2017

A potential battle is brewing at council - which begins meeting Wednesday - over a proposal to turn a heavily polluted, city-owned strip of land at Bathurst and Front Sts. into a park.

Councillor Mike Layton has launched a petition encouraging supporters of the proposal to tell Mayor John Tory and councillors “that this parkland is sorely needed.”

“When I proposed a park in a growing TO neighbourhood to be built on city-owned lands at a fraction of the cost of buying the property, I didn’t expect resistance from the mayor’s allies on city council. I was wrong and am being told we are in for a fight at council,” Layton wrote in the online petition.

Mayor John Tory is not part of the resistance. As long as environmental concerns are addressed, the proposal “deserves our consideration” because of the rapidly growing population downtown and dramatic shortage of green space, he said Tuesday.

But one of Tory’s key allies feels differently about what the future of the “terribly toxic dumpsite” once the site of a lead smelter and battery disposal yard.

Deputy Mayor Denzil Minnan-Wong said Build Toronto, an arms-length agency responsible for managing surplus city real estate, estimated it would cost $25 million to fully remediate the site for parkland purposes.

And Build Toronto estimated without a “full-depth clean up,” monitoring would cost $3 million annually. The city also stands to lose out on $10 million if the property was sold, Minnan-Wong said.

Minnan-Wong said the Build Toronto information should have been included in a staff report to council.

“All this information should have come out and it didn’t,” Minnan-Wong said Tuesday. “They (staff) seem to think there are no financial implications to making this decision. I respectfully disagree.”

He also questioned why that strip of land is a priority when “150 neighbourhoods are parkland deficient.”

Layton disputed the clean-up figures. He said only a partial remediation at 28 Bathurst St. is needed at a cost of between $3 million and $5 million. Monitoring would be closer to $30,000 or $40,000 annually.

Both planning and the parks department support the park proposal, he noted.

The staff report included on the council agenda says a portion of the irregular shaped property has been remediated. A child-care centre and a men’s shelter sit on that part of the property now.

All remaining on-site contamination has been “capped and is being monitored,” the report says, and “contamination of the lands is not a barrier to the development of the site as a public park.”

The city has about 60 parks that are partially situated on landfill or on capped but not fully remediated land. They include Amesbury Park, Byng Park, Earl Bales Park, Moss Park, Smythe Park and Centennial Park.

Despite council’s decision, a park on the site is years away.

A developer has proposed building a temporary shipping container market, with shops, restaurants and a brewery, for a period of two to three years or until the city converts the land to a park.