City of Toronto Breaks Ground of New Waterfront Plaza, Bathurst Quay Common

While Love Park seems to have captured the hearts of Toronto’s downtown residents after its successful grand opening last week, the public projects development duo of the City of Toronto and Waterfront Toronto are keeping their eyes fixed firmly on the future. After half a decade of work creating and implementing the early stages of a revitalization for the Bathurst Quay site on Toronto’s Central Waterfront, the project’s next stage, a multi-purpose public plaza dubbed Bathurst Quay Common, has officially broken ground. 

Looking north to an overview of the Bathurst Quay Revitalization plan, image courtesy of City of Toronto

The event was held on June 21st, on the site of the former City of Toronto parking lot and passenger pick-up station just east of Billy Bishop Airport. The site also hosts the heritage-designated Canada Malting Silos, a pair of concrete structures built in the early-to-mid 20th century, the recently-developed Ireland Park, and the Corleck Building, the former administrative building for the Canada Malting Company. With a transformative plan already in motion to revitalize all of these valuable waterfront assets, Bathurst Quay Common will be the public space that binds it all together. 

City of Toronto hosts ground breaking for Bathurst Quay Common, image courtesy of Waterfront BIA

Beginning with the plaza, a design by PFS Studio will transform the ground realm, with a focus on improving access to the waterfront and creating flexible spaces that serve meaningful uses in the community. Extensive planting and tree canopy will fill the plaza with greenery in the summer months, and a range of seating options will enable pedestrians to enjoy the waterfront in new ways. 

The Plaza will improve waterfront access and uses for pedestrians, image courtesy of City of Toronto

With shovels in the ground to bring this plaza to life, the City has begun planning a subsequent phase that will see a second plaza created on the neighbouring site, located immediately to the east, across the Portland slip. Currently housing the Quay West Marina and a below-grade parking garage, the design contemplates the creation of new greenspaces, a public pavilion, and a multimedia projection system that could be used to screen films and art installations on the eastern face of the Malting Silos. 

Looking northwest to concept design for new plaza on site of Quay West Marina, image courtesy of City of Toronto

Other components of the larger Bathurst Quay Revitalization have been underway for years already, and are beginning to yield exciting results. While the City continues to evaluate a potential future programming for the massive silo structures, it was clear that the derelict state of their exteriors was a problem that needed to be addressed.

Beginning with the cylindrical southern silo structure, a full facade reconstruction was commenced last year to restore the crumbling concrete. Reaching completion just a few weeks ago, the scaffold has now been removed, revealing the pristine new concrete exterior. Work will now pick up on the more orthogonally shaped northern silo, with scaffolds in place to allow workers to begin the restorative concrete work. 

Looking north at the restored concrete exterior of the Southern Silos, image courtesy of Bryan Bowen

Also on the go is the redevelopment of the Corleck Building, which had fallen into a state of disrepair due to years of inactivity. Led by the Canada Ireland Foundation, this adaptive reuse project is seeing the building transformed into a new community arts venue with a mixed-use performance space. 

Designed by Kearns Mancini Architects, the new canopies that add a contemporary flare to the historic structure have been installed, and interior retrofitting is well underway to create the new double-height event space. 

Looking northeast at the progress on the retrofitting of the Corlek Building, image by Rohan Dawar

The entirety of the Bathurst Quay site will be busy with construction throughout the summer as the team works towards delivering the next chapter in the evolving story of Toronto’s waterfront. With a host of successful projects already completed, and a strong drive to continue establishing more pedestrian-oriented spaces along the lakeshore that are designed for the benefit of local communities, the future of Toronto’s waterfront park network is looking promising. 

UrbanToronto will continue to follow progress on this development, but in the meantime, you can learn more about it from our Database file, linked below. If you’d like, you can join in on the conversation in the associated Project Forum thread or leave a comment in the space provided on this page.

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