Aerial video shows off astonishing progress around Toronto's engineered river
The newly-rerouted Don River is finally free flowing in Toronto, snaking down a renaturalized path through what will soon be an entirely new district of the city.
Now, one month after dams were ceremoniously removed to fully connect the waterway once more, new footage taken from high above showcases just how far development has come in that pocket of the city.
The pioneering Port Lands Flood Protection Project (PLFPP) that brought us the new and improved river valley has been many years and over $1 billion in the making, with much still left to do as a human-made island — formerly known as Villiers, and now Ookwemin Minisin — is built up into a neighbourhood full of homes, offices, stores, restaurants, parks and roadways.
How Toronto's new artificial island will be transformed into a neighbourhood https://t.co/aaA395biSC
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As the immense undertaking pushes on, hitting milestone after milestone in seemingly quick succession, the landscape is changing to become more impressive by the day. The video shared on Friday by Waterfront Toronto — which is leading the PLFPP — is the latest in a series demonstrating how well the entire vision, in all its vast scope, is coming to life before our eyes.
"Before we started construction in 2018, this whole area was mostly empty, post-industrial space. No new parks or homes could be built here until the risk of flooding was removed," the agency explains in a voiceover.
"This newly-completed river is part of our design to protect these post-industrial lands south of Lake Shore Boulevard, as well as portions of South Riverdale and Leslieville, from flooding."
In the clip, we follow the 1.3-km-long, extended and redirected segment of the Don River flowing into Lake Ontario, seeing the newly-aligned Cherry Street and its futuristic new bridges that connect the island to the mainland, the site itself on which the community of Ookwemin Minisin will be built, and how preparations for the next steps in construction are underway.
Flying over the perimeter of the new landmass, Waterfront Toronto says that the western edge of the new island "will feature a waterfront promenade and varied landscape with places to look out over the inner harbour."
Rounding to the north side, bordered by the Keating Channel, there are the early makings of what will be a stunning new park—one of many green spaces coming to the precinct. The channel itself is also slated "to become a lively urban canal" as residents and businesses move in on the other side of Commissioners Street.
With so many of the city's other large-scale infrastructure projects experiencing never-ending hold-ups amid troubled, drawn-out construction, it's nice to see that one initiative is moving ahead, reshaping an under-utilized part of the waterfront into something new and truly exciting.
