5 new projects receive grants to shake up underused public spaces

Thestar.com
August 27, 2018
Gilbert Ngabo

A linear park in the heart of downtown. A green pop-up square in the middle of a strip mall’s parking lots. A train-watching area or a community cafe out of a shipping container.

These are among five community initiatives that have won grants between $15,000 and $50,000 from the Public Space Incubator, a challenge from advocacy group Park People, to implement bold concepts for better use of public spaces across the city.

The announcement comes as Toronto celebrates completion of the first phase of the Bentway, a project that transformed the dull Gardiner Expressway underpass into a skating trail and a vibrant community gathering space. Like the Bentway, the new initiatives aim to liven up some of the city’s unused or underutilized open spaces, and make those spaces more welcoming and engaging for people.

Park People’s manager of policy and planning Jake Tobin Garrett said the group received more than 70 letters of intent for the grants, which were narrowed down to the final 25 applications from which the five winners emerged.

The Laneway Project is planning a linear park for Nicholson Lane in the St. Lawrence Market area.

 “We knew we would get a lot of interest in this, but we were surprised to receive so many applications,” he said of the program, which was made possible by $340,000 in funding from the Balsam Foundation and renowned urban planner and architect Ken Greenberg and his wife, Eti.

The main objective of the challenge was to solicit ideas that could shake up how we generally view public spaces, Garrett said, noting the effective use of shared space is becoming more important as more people move into the city and into smaller condos and apartments.

PlazaPOPS will transform the parking space along a strip mall on Lawrence Ave. near Wexford Heights in Scarborough into a parklet for artistic engagement, starting next spring.

“There’s a lot of focus, I think, as we grow as a city and increase in density and we’re seeing all these new people moving in and neighbourhoods sort of changing, to focus on making our collective spaces the best that they can be,” he said.

The winning projects include PlazaPOPS, which will transform the parking space along a strip mall on Lawrence Ave. near Wexford Heights in Scarborough into a parklet for artistic engagement, starting next spring. The pop-up plaza concept originated in San Francisco, and has expanded to other cities.

The Red Embers art installation in Allan Gardens is meant to be both a celebration of Indigenous artists and a memorial for missing and murdered Indigenous women.

Thorncliffe Park Women’s Committee teamed up with the learning centre in Alexandra Park to imagine a neighbourhood cafe inside a shipping container. The project aims to be a lively neighbourhood hub and a sustainable source of revenue for local residents, many of whom are newcomers.

Another project, the Urban Discovery, will create a train-viewing area out of a shipping container at Bathurst and Front Sts., complete with a pop-up adventure playground for children.

The Community Cafe in the Thorncliffe Park neighbourhood aims to be a lively neighbourhood hub and a sustainable source of revenue for local residents.

And the Native Women’s Resource Centre will work with Indigenous designers for Red Embers, an art installation in Allan Gardens at Carlton and Jarvis Sts. The installation is meant to be both a celebration of Indigenous artists and a memorial for missing and murdered Indigenous women.

“Red Embers is setting the tone for a more feminine urbanism in urban design,” said Tiffany Creyke, one of the team members, in an email.

“Our politicians are talking about reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples in Canada but what is reconciliation when there is a lack of female Indigenous decision-makers in our urban industry (planners, architects, engineers and politicians, for example).”

The Urban Discovery will create a train-viewing area out of a shipping container at Bathurst and Front Sts.

Toronto’s Laneway Project has also won a grant for its proposal to create a linear park alongside Nicholson Lane in the St. Lawrence Market area. The project’s executive director Michelle Senayah said they’ve already been in consultations with area residents, who expressed interest in having more green space in the mostly paved corridor.

“Something that is going to be there, and it came out very strongly from the community visioning process, is the desire to have greening in the space, community gardens and planters,” she said.

“Our population is growing, we’re intensifying in the same amount of space and we need to not be thinking of particularly public spaces as being sort of for one thing only at all times.”