Toronto’s high-tech Quayside district takes ‘next step’ as new deal reached with Google sister company

Thestar.com
August 1, 2018
David Rider

Toronto’s waterfront planning agency and Google sister company Sidewalk Labs have agreed to proceed with plans for construction of the high-tech Quayside neighbourhood, despite an agency board member’s resignation in apparent protest of the deal.

Remaining directors of Waterfront Toronto unanimously approved a “plan development agreement” at the agency’s Bay St. offices. That agreement, and last fall’s “framework agreement” that it replaces and was previously kept secret, were posted online after being ratified Tuesday.

Waterfront board chair Helen Burstyn said the agreement unlocks up to $40 million (U.S.) that Sidewalk Labs will spend working to forge a final agreement by next spring that would allow the partners to build a 12-acre waterfront high-tech test district.

“This really allows us to move to the next step,” Burstyn told reporters after the meeting. “If we didn’t get this right, we couldn’t move on the next stage and the next stage after that.”

The plan envisions a neighbourhood with such features as streets reserved for driverless cars and cyclists; mixed-use, low-cost wood composite buildings; winter “mitigation” devices including heated paths; and automated trash pickup through underground chambers, with computer sensors analyzing everything from vehicle flow to weather.

Sidewalk Labs’ $40 million won’t be used for any of that quite yet. The money will pay for research and other costs to obtain the final agreement required before construction.

Urbanists around the world are watching Toronto to see if a tech giant can successfully build a cutting-edge community within a city, using innovation to solve problems such as road safety and housing costs.

But some see the “smart city” movement as a Big Tech bid to hoover up and monetize residents’ data, while bending cash-strapped cities to their will.

The new deal drops several provisions from last fall’s quickly crafted agreement that rang alarm bells behind the scenes, and adds promises of safeguards for data protection and privacy, which have emerged as a major concern about the sensor-laden district.

The original deal envisioned public land being transferred or sold to Sidewalk Labs. Now, Waterfront Toronto will retain ownership and not be obligated to invest money for this stage.

The planned development agreement also drops earlier language identifying Sidewalk Labs as a co-master developer. Now, Waterfront Toronto is the “revitalization lead” while Sidewalk Labs is merely the “innovation and funding partner.”

The new deal promises Quayside would feature “the most privacy protected/citizen-centered set of policies and governance structures in the world, recognizing privacy as a fundamental human right,” but it does not address specific demands such as data residing in Canadian servers. Further work is to be done on data privacy and protections while the final agreement is being negotiated.

Burstyn said she is confident lengthy negotiations addressed problems in the deal signed last fall before a splashy launch that included Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Eric Schmidt, then executive chairman of Sidewalk Labs and Google parent company Alphabet. “We’re satisfied now,” she said.

But not everyone shares that sentiment. The board meeting started with news that member Julie Di Lorenzo, a prominent residential real estate developer, resigned on the eve of the much-awaited agreement approval.

The president of Diamante Urban Corp. chaired the board’s investment and real estate committee -- responsible for major development projects -- last fall and refused to sign the framework agreement, saying four days wasn’t enough time to properly review it.

Di Lorenzo has not responded to the Star’s request for comment.

Her resignation followed that of Waterfront Toronto chief executive Will Fleissig, a driving force behind the Quayside project until he reportedly butted heads with the board in early July.

Mayor John Tory, who is seeking re-election, said in a statement he is confident Quayside will be built and that Waterfront Toronto and all three levels of government “will ensure that this work is being done in the best interest of Toronto residents, with a focus on process, privacy, and real public benefit.”