The city has a plan in place. A plan, remarkably, with funding and development approved by all three levels of government, a plan dating from the time of Mayor Ford’s predecessors that he intends to swat away and replace with a half-baked plan of his own.
What? No, I’m not talking about Transit City. The Waterfront. Budget chief Mike Del Grande has as much as said it’s a bold-faced cash grab to patch the gaping hole in Ford’s budget by dumping the waterfront land on the public market. My earlier piece goes into detail about just what the Fords intend to put on the land (one can almost see them fawning over the architectural drawing “And there’s the big ferris wheel…and the mono rail…and there’s the Burger King - I told ‘em to put that there”), so I won’t go into the ugly details.
Their big attack to Toronto Waterfront, the board overseeing the development of the land currently and for the last decade, was that the board didn’t have the finances for the plans in place, somewhere around $650 million, nor any way of getting it. Not so, said Toronto Waterfront, and produced a financing plan developed by them and the Federal and Provincial governments to produce every cent they need by borrowing against future tax revenues and increased land value, the same way dozens of other sites in the world have.
The waterfront has attracted $1.5 billion in investment, and is entering into a $1 billion deal with the Pan Am Games site developers. It’s gotten approval and praise from citizens, urban planners and the development industry. It’s fully financed and well-planned. It’s backed by both upper levels of our government.
When will Toronto councillors wake up to the cries of protest from the city around them?
