Futuristic new community about to sprout from Toronto waterfront
Toronto's east waterfront is undergoing a generational transformation, reclaiming and reintegrating former industrial lands into a true destination.
The recently expanded Biidaasige Park is just one example of how this area of the waterfront is being reclaimed, and many other changes are on the horizon that will further transform this neck of the woods.
Demolition recently cleared away the future site of Waterfront Toronto's Quayside community at the foot of Parliament Street, a futuristic new 4.9-hectare (12-acre) district that will feature an impressive roster of rental and condominium buildings rising as tall as 70 storeys and featuring designs from a team of acclaimed architecture firms.
To set the stage for Quayside, demolition of the existing buildings on site commenced in mid-June.
Waterfront Toronto announced at that time that "site preparation and demolition work will take place on the Quayside development site at 259 and 291 Lake Shore Boulevard East, between Bonnycastle and Small Streets."
The demolition activity, now essentially complete, has been carried out for Dream Unlimited by its construction manager, CentreCourt Constructors Inc. to prepare the site of the community's first phase rental buildings.
This site prep work was conducted in phases, including interior demolition, above-grade structural demolition, below-grade demolition and site clearing.
Waterfront Toronto states that construction of new buildings on this site is scheduled to begin later this year.
It may seem like just another residential complex starting construction in a city with too many such projects to count, but the impending start of work on the Quayside community will just be the latest chapter in an almost decade-long saga to build something special at this site.
Back in 2017, Waterfront Toronto announced a partnership with Sidewalk Labs, an urban technology division of Alphabet, Google's parent company, to construct a futuristic community wired to the gills with innovative tech — and a raft of associated privacy concerns — like data-monitoring public benches.
That plan for the 'smart' community dubbed Sidewalk Toronto ultimately collapsed under its own immense ambitions in under three years, leaving a giant question mark looming over one of the city's most prized tracts of land.
Revived plans once again generated hype through the 2020s before the plan faced the inevitable watering-down typical of high-flying architectural visions.
Now, nine years later, a revived version of the plan built on a new partnership with local developers is about to get going, bringing even more life to Toronto's regenerating waterfront.
Quayside Toronto
