While the gloomy weather of the last few weeks was testing the patience of many of us, the prolonged rain has had positive effects on greenery sprouting up across the city, giving us the first preview of how the Lower Don Lands Redevelopment will look in bloom.
The innovative naturalization project from Waterfront Toronto has come out of an active winter construction season with some impressive progress to display, highlighted by the opening of one of the project’s signature multi-coloured bridges. Now, with warmer weather ahead, the project is gearing up for an active summer that will see more excavation work to prepare the engineered riverbed of the new mouth of the Don for its eventual flooding.
To begin, Waterfront Toronto recently shared a drone fly-over video that captures the state of the expansive Port Lands site as it looked at the end of April. For anyone who may have been skeptical about how effective the project would be, hopefully this video is enough proof that there is plenty to look forward to.
The video offers a comprehensive update on how the project has advanced since Waterfront Toronto’s last update video from November, but to offer a little more detail, we have compiled a couple photos that show some of the notable changes on site up close.
One of the most palpable visual changes on site over the last few months has been the progress made in the effort to ‘armour’ the riverbed on a specific north-south stretch situated immediately to the north of the Commissioner Street Bridge. The image below pictures this passage now extensively treated with large stones along the riverbed, spanning as far south as the Bridge, where the armoured section terminates.
Further north, the forms for the extension of the Lake Shore Bridge have also come along. The project will see the current bridge, pictured below with cars passing over, elongated to the west by a distance of three spans in order to widen the river’s path, which currently encounters a pinch point due to the narrow opening at this location. Once the passage is widened, the river will be able to flow with less obstruction, and in the event of heavy rain, the risk of flooding will be drastically reduced.
Most recently, work to complete the new Cherry Street took a notable step forward, moving from the grading stage into the concrete stage. The image below captures the first concrete curbs being laid along the pathway of the new street, beginning on the north side of the Cherry Street North Bridge and terminating at Commissioner Street to the south, to connect with the newly realigned curving section of Cherry Street.
With exciting progress being made on this transformative project, the city has taken notice, and even while construction continues, cyclists and pedestrians are out in droves to experience the new destination. Much more work is still ahead, however, with Waterfront Toronto’s latest completion estimates pushed back from Summer 2024 to end of year 2024, with the possibility of a phased opening for some sections.
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.
* * *
UrbanToronto has a research service, UrbanToronto Pro, that provides comprehensive data on construction projects in the Greater Toronto Area—from proposal through to completion. We also offer Instant Reports, downloadable snapshots based on location, and a daily subscription newsletter, New Development Insider, that tracks projects from initial application.
| Related Companies: | LEA Consulting, Priestly Demolition Inc. |