Province plans new transit hub for Ontario Line, including a ‘Union Station to the east’

Thestar.com
April 12, 2021
Robert Benzie

Queen’s Park is proposing the first “transit-oriented communities” for the new Ontario Line subway be built in Corktown and at a “Union Station to the east” on the Unilever lands, the Star has learned.

In a move to build housing steps from the new transit line and to generate post-pandemic economic activity, Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives hope to eventually kickstart a dozen such neighbourhoods along the line.

Negotiations between the province and the city are under way for construction at the future Corktown station, near Parliament and Front streets, and at a planned East Harbour transit hub at the 38-acre Unilever site near the Don Valley Parkway.

“We want to use this opportunity to build more than just station boxes,” associate transportation minister Kinga Surma said Sunday.

“With this historic investment (of $28.5 billion for the various transit lines announced in 2019) we want to optimize this opportunity to really, really shape and build and enhance communities,” said Surma, who will officially unveil the proposal Monday morning.

The Ontario Line is the planned new 16-kilometre subway snaking through some of the city’s densest neighbourhoods from Ontario Place on the waterfront to the Ontario Science Centre in Don Mills.

“This is a very practical way that we can improve the quality of life for people across Toronto,” she said, pointing out additional public transit gets commuters out of their cars and reduces gridlock.

It's hoped the East Harbour hub could become a major employment centre, creating 50,000 local jobs.

Proposed for the former site of a Unilever soap factory, the East Harbour station is envisioned as the second major transit hub Toronto has long needed.

“It has the potential to be the Union Station to the east -- it’s a multi-modal hub that will connect the Ontario Line with SmartTrack, GO rail expansion as well as other local modes of transit,” the associate minister said, referring to future TTC streetcar expansion.
“So a lot of planning, a lot of design work, a lot of consultation has to be done. East Harbour is a very critical site,” she said, noting it was already planned as a SmartTrack station.

SmartTrack, Mayor John Tory’s signature transit initiative, is designed to run rapid all-day two-way service on the heavy rail tracks currently used by GO commuter trains. It’s supposed to open by 2026.

It’s hoped the East Harbour hub could become a major employment centre, creating 50,000 local jobs.

“Corktown is important because it’s part of the early works for the southern part of the Ontario Line and will be the launch shaft -- that’s essentially where the tunnel-boring machine will be assembled,” she said.

The Ontario Line is the planned new 16-kilometre subway snaking through some of the city's densest neighbourhoods from Ontario Place on the waterfront to the Ontario Science Centre in Don Mills.

Along with a municipal review, the province will hold public meetings with local communities, Indigenous groups, and interested stakeholders this summer and fall.

While Queen’s Park and city hall have sparred over the building of new condo towers at Dominion foundries heritage site on nearby Eastern Ave., that controversial project is not related to these new initiatives.

Surma emphasized the provincial and municipal governments are working well together on the Ontario Line.

“Everyone wants to get shovels in the ground ... but we’re taking things one step at a time. We really want to work with the city, we want to hear the feedback from the local councillor,” she said.

“We really want to have an extensive consultation because these sites are important to communities and we recognize that. Once the consultation is complete we will have more to say.”

The Ministry of Transportation provided the Star with renderings of the planned stations and housing, but Surma stressed these were just preliminary drawings.

For the Corktown station, there could be housing, parkland, a community centre, and a library adjacent to the heritage site of Canada’s first parliament.

With the deadly COVID-19 pandemic ravaging Ontario’s economy, the Tories last summer passed legislation designed to fast-track construction of homes -- including affordable housing units -- along the Ontario Line.

The government hopes similar “transit-oriented communities” could also be constructed atop or adjacent to stations on the Scarborough subway, the proposed Eglinton West LRT and Yonge North subway extensions.

But the new legislation, intended to cut red tape to expedite housing construction, does not apply to existing TTC stations.