Earlier this week, four months after Toronto won the bid to host the 2015 Pan Am Games, nobody was answering the phone at the Pan Am office, and the website led to nowhere. Increasingly, there is an unsettling feeling that the enormous amount of visionary work required for converting the derelict, toxic ground of the West Don Lands into a sustainable wunderkind of urbanity will not be fully accomplished by the Games' July, 2015, opening.
Hosting the Games has accelerated by several years the build-out of the West Don Lands, which are located at the mouth of the Don River and stretch west to Cherry Street at Lakeshore Road. The once-industrial lands are ripe with toxicity. Originally planned to be cleaned up, landscaped and built out with mid-rise condominiums over 10 to 12 years in three phases, now more than half of the area is being scheduled for completion by the time of the Games. Up to 2,100 units must be built to accommodate a rotation of 8,500 athletes and coaches.
But even at this week's unveiling of plans for Underpass Park, designed to convert 2.5 acres of dark wasteland that lurks directly below the Richmond-Adelaide overpass, Waterfront Toronto CEO John Campbell couldn't say how much remediation of the park's toxic soil would be required, though some $2.5-million is being set aside for the cleanup.
"Months have gone by. Who is in charge? How are we bringing developers to the table?" asks one developer with experience working on high-profile downtown residential developments, and who, like others interviewed for this column, requested anonymity. "There are too many unknowns right now."
The West Don Lands belong to a secret part of Toronto where mystery and danger have been tolerated for a long time. Because it was cast off decades ago as an untouchable, dirty site - 80 acres big - the West Don Lands, formerly known as Ataratiri, offers a derelict zone of abandoned urbanity to people living on the edge. A few days ago, I saw a man walking down the median of the Richmond-Adelaide ramps, and, directly south, a couple of pale children being corralled by their father in an empty triangle of land where their home - a blue school bus with curtains - is parked.
Change is under way but, it, too, is difficult to map. If you look over the brightly coloured hoardings near the intersection of Sumach and King Street East - festooned with the words "Building our New Blue Edge" - you'll see big mounds of churned-up earth and some diggers at work. Next to the Distillery District, at the western flank of the West Don Lands, there are more hoardings and more exclamations of design excellence, sustainability and technology. All this at the future site of the athletes village, an imaginary neighbourhood required to house three times - three times! - the number of athletes accommodated in Vancouver during the Olympics.
Unknown, or at least undeclared right now, is who is actually leading the charge for the build-out of the West Don Lands. The Ontario Realty Corporation, the property manager for the province, owns most of the turf. Waterfront Toronto has spearheaded some necessary and occasionally inspired groundwork: the environmental cleanup and building of the Don River Park, a berm-like, 17-acre flood-protection park; and the engagement of some excellent landscape architects to design edgy parkettes (such as the Underpass Park) and streets that privilege pedestrians, not cars.
But the actual build-out of the Pan Am Village is still being negotiated between Waterfront Toronto and the province's builders at Infrastructure Ontario, the province's chief building agency. An announcement, long overdue, regarding the governance issue is expected within weeks.
"There is enough time to build. We've done rough estimations for environmental remediation and how much time construction would take," says George Stewart, senior vice-president of Infrastructure Ontario. "But we certainly can't dawdle on this." Brave words, considering that jurisdictional wrangling along the Toronto waterfront is legendary.
Campbell says he's working closely with the folks at Infrastructure Ontario to decide how to approach the development community about the build-out. Though the clock is ticking, there's still, unbelievably, no decision on who gets to build what, or how. Will one developer be selected to build the entire project, the way that Millennium Properties built the 2010 Olympic Village? Or will developers be invited to compete on building out individual parcels of land? Campbell doesn't know. "We haven't yet decided with Infrastructure Ontario what the packages will be," he says.
"They're so flying by the seat of the pants," says one respected Toronto developer with major urban projects in his portfolio. "Everybody doing their own thing, running their own show."
The area's toxicity has been behind much of the delay. An environmental-remediation expert is only now being solicited through a competition call, and will likely finally be appointed next month. Then begins the work of poking around the entire West Don Lands site, gauging how high toxic levels are. It'll likely be the end of next year before that work is complete.
Once a developer starts seriously digging into the soil, and further tests are conducted, more toxicity may be found. Toxic soil will have to be either moved hundreds of kilometres away to a less-urban site; treated; or capped, which is what Context Development did for its Market Wharf condo tower under construction near St. Lawrence Market, where it built a parking structure that effectively caps the contaminants.
Even a best-case scenario of clean, ready-to-go lands would be difficult to develop on a hurry-up basis over the next several years in Toronto. The federal infrastructure program, involving the construction of new university buildings, recreation facilities and roads, has fully engaged the attention of the construction trades. "Right now, there's a shortage of trades to do the work we have to do," says one developer of large-scale residential projects. "Finding people will be a challenge."
Ian Troop, recently appointed CEO of the Pan Am Games, is a self-described "brand manager at heart" with experience selling product for Procter & Gamble and ConAgra Foods, but he is an unknown quantity in the architecture and development industry. His mandate - to direct the building of new sports facilities and the athletes village, as well as to find thousands of volunteers, among many other jobs - needs to be split with a regeneration expert. Consider the jurisdictional corset that Troop must wear. He's operating under the direction of the province, building in Toronto and surrounding regions, negotiating with Waterfront Toronto, the City of Toronto and, oh yes, he's expected to build and run the Pan Am show.
Development of the West Don Lands has already been plagued by serious delays. The District Energy Centre - part of Waterfront Toronto's commitment to meeting the heating and cooling demands of its new neighbourhoods through a centralized district energy system - has been eagerly anticipated since it was announced two years ago that New York luminary Steven Holl would be designing it with local firm Bortolotto Architects. Construction was to begin at the end of 2008. Alas, the plan to centralize is now being rethought, says Waterfront CEO Campbell. A smaller series of energy minicentres is now being considered for the site, but when or how that will happen has yet to be decided.
Stay tuned for an epic regeneration project that promises to spin, falter and entertain for years to come.