A Toronto airport runway will be converted into a massive public park

The relocation of Bombardier's aircraft manufacturing operation out of Downsview Airport is marking the final chapter in the former military air base's rich history — though it is opening up the door for new city-building opportunities.

Developer Northcrest and the Canada Lands Company are working with the City on plans to redevelop the former Bombardier-owned airport site at Downsview into a new mixed-use community centred around the disused runway, which would be repurposed into a massive linear public space.

The 210-hectare, Northcrest/Canada Lands-owned portion of the airport site — known as id8 Downsview — is situated at the heart of a broader 540-hectare Secondary Plan to redevelop the area into a vast neighbourhood.

Once fully realized over a span of 30 years, the project is expected to support an estimated population of 110,000, including approximately 60,000 new homes and 47,000 jobs.

Toronto neighbourhood could be totally transformed over the next decades https://t.co/MOlhdzMrZL #Toronto #TorontoNeighbourhood

— blogTO (@blogTO) August 2, 2021

The sheer scale of this city-building opportunity is easier to fully grasp with the help of a diagram showing the Secondary Plan's area compared with a large area of downtown Toronto spanning from Bloor Street south to the rail corridor, and from Spadina Avenue east to Jarvis Street.

City plans call for development on these lands to include a range of housing options, with a minimum 40 per cent of units to support families with two or more bedrooms. Minimum affordable housing requirements are also being considered, like a plan to dedicate 10 per cent of residential floor area to purpose-built rental units with affordable rents guaranteed for 20 years.

Tying this enormous community together, a planned central feature – dubbed the Runway – will repurpose the runway and taxiway that served countless military and commercial airplanes during its almost century-long existence that saw it used as an aviation manufacturing plant, a commercial airfield and military airbase.

The Runway is imagined as a linear public space that will measure a minimum of 20 metres wide, with some key areas retaining the runway's full "legacy" width of 60 metres.

Planning documents describe the sprawling public space's character as varying along its length with a series of "urban rooms" and open areas to support a range of programmed events, allowing the feature to be animated year-round.

City Council is set to consider the site plan for the Downsview Airport lands in May, and lobbyists for the project are trying to grease the wheels of democracy prior to the upcoming spring council session.

In his City Hall Watcher newsletter, Matt Elliott covered a recent lobbying file led by former councillor Joe Mihevc on behalf of Northcrest.

Elliott writes that "Mihevc met with Mayor Olivia Chow on January 12 on behalf of his client, Northcrest Development, to discuss their redevelopment of the former Bombardier-owned airport site in Downsview."