Giant parking lot may derail hockey arena plans in the port lands.
The proposed site plan for the new Portlands Sports Complex would see a giant parking lot attached to the port lands hockey arena stretching all the way down to the shipping channel. The parking lot has the arena skating on thin ice.
Photo/COURTESY
Plans to build a four-pad hockey arena in the port lands with a parking lot twice as large stretching to the edge of the shipping channel is skating on thin ice as far as local councillor Paula Fletcher is concerned.
"I have told the mayor and city manager there's no way I'm able to support that amount of surface parking on the waterfront," Fletcher said. "I'm very supportive of building a spectacular four-pad (hockey) arena with parking that's tucked away - a great fabulous building that will be an iconic waterfront building. But this is unsupportable, and I doubt it would make it through the Toronto and East York Community Council."
Fletcher made the comments after seeing a plan for the Portlands Sports Complex obtained by The Mirror.
The site plan shows the four-pad arena at the corner of Commissioners Street and Don Roadway. Surface parking for the project stretches south from there - with 433 parking spaces ranging as far south as the ship channel.
The design has already prompted the resignation of prominent planner/architect Ken Greenberg from the $34-million project.
In an interview, Greenberg said the project was always a chancy fit with Toronto's Lower Donlands Plan, which is coming forward to Toronto City Council in July. He said the plan, with suburban-style parking and a large footprint, sets the wrong precedent for the precinct.
"It would become the first thing to be built in the Lower Don Lands - so it becomes a signal of everything to come," he said. "There are ways of doing almost any facility that are more urban, more sustainable, and other things apart from the old paradigm of being automobile dependent and sprawling. This version of the four-pad arena is clearly an example of that way of doing things."
He said such a design might be appropriate, "in a fringe location, but to install it that way right on the new river, right on the edge of the film studios, in an area that's really planned to be a mixed-use neighbourhood, is just a huge conflict."
Greenberg had become involved in the project when he and U.S. partners won the Lower Don Lands Design Competition in 2007.
He resigned from the firm hired by the city to design this project last month.
He said the resignation came when the city demanded a "major change of course" from pursuing a design he felt fit better with the area.
"We were well down that road. We'd come up with some really creative solutions when there was a move to change course and just revert to the plan which you've seen," he said. "I couldn't stay involved in something like that."
City officials associated with the project weren't available for interview at Mirror press time Wednesday.