Gibson Square revives historical spirit of North York
Surrounded by condo towers, redesigned park puts a new spotlight on Gibson House Museum.
Thestar.com
May 29, 2015
By Tracy Hanes
A redesigned park being unveiled Saturday in the heart of North York City Centre bridges the gap between the modern condo towers that surround it and the area’s historic past.
The park is on a site that includes the Gibson Square mixed-use condo development, and was originally on the farm of David Gibson, a politician, public servant and land surveyor. His 1851 home stands adjacent to the two condo towers and is now known as the Gibson House Museum.
The re-design, achieved by the developer working with the city and community, incorporates a heritage apple tree, provides better exposure and access to the museum, and offers welcome green space in a busy urban area.
Gibson Park was created in 1979 on a .75-hectare site at the corner of Yonge St. and Park Home Ave., where then-landowner Imperial Oil intended to build its headquarters. The park land was leased the city.
Menkes Developments Inc. bought the property when Imperial Oil decided to locate in Calgary instead. In 2008, city council opposed Menkes’ plan for Gibson Square, which required an official plan amendment to allow for mixed-use residential on the site that had been designated for office buildings. Menkes successfully appealed the city’s decision at the Ontario Municipal Board.
As part of gaining approval for the condo project, Menkes agreed to redevelop the park. President Alan Menkes says that while Imperial Oil’s plan “turned its back on Gibson House Museum,” his company decided to make it an integral part of the redevelopment, even though it wasn’t part of the site.
The developer, city staff, a landscape architect, museum staff and community members formed a working group to come up with a new design that, among other things, would preserve the heritage Tolman Sweet Apple Tree on the corner of Yonge and Park Home. The Gibson House Museum, set 300 metres back from the street, had been gradually engulfed by new development and had no access from Park Home Ave.
That challengel says Landscape architect Sibylle von Knobloch of NAK Design Group, was: “How do we allow for these two towers, allow the presence of Gibson House, and allow for a park for enjoyment? There were heritage factors, urban design factors, good city planning factors and community input.
“It definitely had challenges. There were a lot of stakeholders involved and meeting all the objectives was interesting.”
“The city lost a very important battle on whether the site should be commercial or residential, but the only good thing we got out of it was that Menkes was very cooperative about the parkland and open space,” says Councillor John Filion (Ward 23, Willowdale). “This is a key piece of open space in the downtown area and the most recognizable open space we have in Willowdale-North York. It’s great to be able to preserve that and to add a nice area above the parking garage that will function as a park as well. There’s a hugely dense population along there and it’s important to have places for people to gather and that they enjoy walking through.”
The park has been redeveloped into two parcels: a parkette at the intersection of Yonge and Park Home and a larger park to the west, with the condo’s underground parking garage below. The Tolman Sweet Apple tree is the focal point of the parkette and has seating for people to sit and enjoy the green space.
Menkes says the city planners wanted the animation on Yonge St. maintained. “We moved the condos and retail back from the street to achieve that, and now we have a big forecourt (the parkette) that engages the community from a park and retail standpoint. It was tricky, but it all turned out well at the end and we were able to please all stakeholders.”
The west park along Park Home Ave. has three distinct spaces: an orchard that people will walk through to reach Gibson House Museum, a central plaza with perennial gardens and an open lawn. The redesign provides a new focus on museum, allowing for open views and arrival from Park Home Ave. though a grove of apple trees. A black granite backdrop that disguises the underground parking entrance pays homage to the Gibson family with larger-than-life vignettes of their daily life. The park contains many cues to David Gibson’s original respect for Yonge St., by aligning the main landscape features square to it, as he had done over 150 years ago.
A public artwork, One Hundred Links - One Chain by Stephen Cruise, commissioned in 1997 to commemorate Gibson, is installed throughout the park, with pieces referencing rural farm life and aspects of surveying with links and chains.
Gibson House Museum curator Dorie Billach says the museum is already benefitting from its enhanced visibility.
“Our walk-in traffic has started to increase and the number of people who came through here on the Doors Open weekend (mid-May) doubled from last year,” says Billach. “The re-creation of a portion of the orchard will also really help us to broaden some of the programming about the Gibson farm, and urban farming and gardening are growing in popularity.”
Billach says urban school kids who have never seen a farm will get a glimpse of that thanks to a picket fence, historic gate and new heritage garden. She says the granite mural depicting the family’s daily life is “quite a stunning feature in park and helps promotes museum and really entrenches the history of the family in area.”
The benefit of such collaborations is “that the public is going to get a plan or building or elements that are important to the community, while private interests get the buildings they need to make the economic argument viable,” says Menkes. “This is a great outcome of everyone working together to come up with a mixed-use plan that serves all interests.”
The developer has transferred ownership of the west park to the city, but the condo buildings will maintain it.
