H I S T O R Y
Toronto's Harbourfront district was created from landfill in the early 1800's. It quickly developed into a tangled web of industry that included shipping facilities, warehouses, railway tracks, grain silos, and factories, all dotting the shoreline. Unfortunately, these physical barriers cut Harbourfront off from the rest of Toronto.
It wasn't until 1972, with the creation of the federally sponsored Harbourfront Corporation, that Toronto citizens began to reclaim their waterfront.
Harbourfront has been undergoing a renaissance ever since.
A shining example of Harbourfront's transformation is the Queens Quay Terminal. This building was one of the largest warehouses in North America when it opened in 1927. The Terminal was remodelled in 1980, and today includes a successful mix of high end residential, commercial, and retail space all under one roof.
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O V E R V I E W
The Harbourfront neighbourhood incorporates a unique blend of residential, cultural, recreational, and commercial uses, all within the same community.
Harbourfront also serves as Toronto's playground by the lake. It is enjoyed by all Toronto residents, as well as being a popular destination point for tourists.
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H O M E S
Harbourfront has the highest concentration of luxury condominium apartment buildings in the City of Toronto. Most of Harbourfront's condominiums were built in the 1980's.
At present, a number of new condominiums are being built with an emphasis on making sure every unit has at least a partial lake view and a balcony.
Harbourfront also has a handful of Marinas that provide seasonal moorings on a rental basis for local and out of town boaters. Many of these hearty souls make Harbourfront their summer home.
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S H O P P I N G
Harbourfront's main shopping district is located along Queens Quay West.
The shopping here is mixed, being geared towards both the local residents and tourists. Queens Quay West is anchored by the Queens Quay Terminal, located at the foot of York Street. The terminal is open seven days a week, and features two floors of shops, galleries, and restaurants.
The Harbourfront is conveniently located within walking distance of the St. Lawrence Market, Toronto's oldest and largest food market.
The St. Lawrence Market offers a cornucopia of culinary delights, including farm fresh eggs, exotic herbs, organic chicken, and an assortment of fruits, vegetables, cheeses, deli meats, and seafood.
A recent addition to Toronto's Harbourfront is the giant Loblaws food and retail centre located on Queens Quay at the foot of Jarvis Street. In addition to groceries and a pharmacy this three storey complex features a variety of retailers, a popular restaurant, and a community meeting place were workshops, cooking classes and public meetings are held.
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R E C R E A T I O N
Harbourfront has more recreational opportunities than any other Toronto neighbourhood.
The Air Canada Centre, Skydome, C.N. Tower, and the Harbourfront Antique Market are all located within this neighbourhood. The Canadian National Exhibition, the Marine Museum, and Old Fort York are all just minutes from Harbourfront, while the Toronto Islands are ten minutes away by ferry boat.
The social, cultural, and recreational hub of the neighbourhood is the Harbourfront Centre, located at the York Quay at 235 Queens Quay West. This popular lakeside venue hosts close to 4,000 events per year, ranging from craft workshops and sailing lessons to jazz festivals and food fairs.
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S C H O O L S
The Waterfront School Jr. & Sr., 635 Queens Quay West, (416) 393-0684
(Public School)Jarvis Collegiate Institute, 495 Jarvis St., (416) 393-0140
(Public High School) Central Technical School, 725 Bathurst St., (416) 393-0060
(Public High School) To find Harbourfront Real Estate for sale, Click Here. Legend:
(P) Public School
(PH) Public High School
(CA) Catholic School
(PR) Private School
(PC) Private Catholic School
(PJ) Private Jewish School
(C) College
(U) University
T R A N S P O R T A T I O N
Queens Quay West has both express and regular bus service, with connections to Union Station. From Union Station you canride Toronto Transit or Go Transit lines to just about anywhere in Metropolitan Toronto. Motorists also have easy access in and out of the City via the Gardiner Expressway and Lake Shore Boulevard. To find Harbourfront Real Estate for sale, Click Here. The Toronto neighbourhood text profiles, sketches and maps displayed on this
website were published in "Your Guide to Toronto Neighbourhoods", are
copyright Maple Tree Publishing and have been reproduced by the Toronto Real
Estate Board under license.
Harbourfront
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Harbourfront |
| — Neighbourhood — |
|
Amsterdam Bridge at Harbourfront |
|
Bathurst Quay to the west and the East Bayfront to the east are often considered part of Harbourfront |
| Country |
 Canada |
| Province |
 Ontario |
| City |
 Toronto |
Harbourfront is a neighbourhood on the northern shore of Lake Ontario within the downtown core of the city of Toronto, Canada. Harbourfront extends west from Yonge Street to Bathurst Street along Queen's Quay. East of Yonge to Parliament St. along Queen's Quay, this mostly industrialized stretch is slated for the future East Bayfront development.
History
Queen's Quay, looking east in 1910
Toronto's harbour has been used since the founding of Toronto for shipping and industrial purposes. The Town of York was founded to the west of the Don River, along the waterfront. When the town was founded, the water's edge was approximately where today's 'Front Street' is located. Over time, the area south of Front Street to today's water's edge south of 'Queen's Quay' was filled in with landfill, creating piers and area for industrial development.
Prior to the 1972 federal election, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau announced the Harbourfront project, which would expropriate the industrial port lands from York Street west to Bathurst Street, south of Queen's Quay and convert them to a cultural and residential district for Toronto, similar to the Granville Island district in Vancouver. The federal government has converted the industrial area to an area mixed with art galleries, performance spaces, boating areas and parks. The surrounding neighbourhood, formerly industrial has been converted by private land developers into a series of condominium towers overlooking the project and Lake Ontario.
From its beginnings as "Harbourfront Corporation", a federal Crown Corporation established in 1972, Harbourfront Centre was formed on January 1, 1991 as a non-profit charitable organization with a mandate to organize and present public events and to operate a 10-acre site encompassing York Quay and John Quay (south of Queens Quay West). Since its inception, Harbourfront Centre has been introducing Toronto audiences to artists and art forms that would not normally be seen in commercial venues, exploring new and bold frontiers in the arts and creative expression.
Character
The area along the waterfront is composed of mixed uses. The federal government lands to the south of Queen's Quay include a community centre, a Toronto fire department station, various boating uses, parkland and the Harbourfront Centre. To the north of Queen's Quay, all of the industrial lands along the street have been replaced with high-rise condominium towers. To the east of the federal government lands, the waterfront is mixed with industrial uses, a hotel, ferry docks, boating uses, a sugar factory and vacant lands.
Notable buildings and facilities
Harbourfront is the site of the Toronto Islands ferry terminal which provides transportation services to the Islands from the foot of Bay Street.
Harbourfront Centre, housing galleries and performance spaces is located at the foot of Lower Simcoe Street. Harbourfront houses four craft studios; ceramics, glass, metal and textiles. All studios began in 1974 and still operate, providing new craft artists with subsidized work spaces at the beginning of their careers. Harbourfront hosts an extensive program of arts and cultural events throughout each summer, including craft and artisan fairs, theatre and dance performances and musical concerts. A series of free concerts is staged at Harbourfront's outdoor concert stage every weekend throughout the summer and in winter there is a free open-air ice rink.
Queen's Quay Terminal, next to Harbourfront Centre, is a former warehouse converted into a mixed-use building including a shopping centre designed for high-end retailers, commercial office space, and a residential condominium development. Today, the mall houses some stores and restaurants, predominantly catering to tourists.
The Canada Malting Silos along the waterfront at the western edge of Harbourfront, are one of the last vestiges of the industrial past of the neighbourhood. The buildings, long ago abandoned by the company that built them, but a proposal for demolition was cancelled when the estimated cost for demolition rose into the millions of dollars. The site is also now considered a heritage site, and any development must conserve some aspect of the industrial past. Two proposals have been made, a Canadian music museum and a Toronto history museum have both been proposed for the site. Both proposals keep the silos, but demolish other buildings on the site.
To the south of the Silos, Toronto Ireland Park was inaugurated in 2004. The site has memorials to an 1878 exodus of Irish persons to Toronto.
To the east of Yonge, at the foot of Jarvis Street is the Redpath Sugar Refinery, which is both an active sugar refinery and a sugar production museum.
Parks and open spaces
Simcoe Wave Deck - Opened Summer 2009
Although Toronto has often been criticized for not having a dynamic and beautiful waterfront park, harbourfront has a network of parks, open spaces and trails that allow residents and visitors to access the public realm. Parks and public spaces like HTO Park, the Martin Goodman Trail, and the Waterfront WaveDecks at the foots of Spadina Avenue, Rees Street and Lower Simcoe combine to beautify the harbourfront and bring people to the water's edge.
List of Harbourfront parks and open spaces
Transportation
The area is served by streetcar links with Union, Spadina, and Bathurst subway stations. The 510 Spadina and 509 Harbourfront streetcar routes terminate at Union Station, travel underground along Bay Street, and surface through in the centre ROW lane on Queen's Quay west. The streetcar route travels along Queen's Quay in a separate right-of-way, either to the CNE grounds, up to Spadina or to Bathurst, depending on day of the week and other factors.
The area is accessible from the Spadina Avenue, Yonge/Bay and Jarvis street off-ramps of the Gardiner Expressway.
Neighbourhood issues
The neighbourhood is separated from the rest of downtown Toronto by the elevated Gardiner Expressway. A project to link Lower Simcoe with Simcoe St. via tunnel is currently under construction to provide a new link between Harbourfront and downtown. Proposals have been made to demolish the Expressway in the area. One proposal was to demolish the highway east of Spadina Avenue. Another proposal, to demolish the highway from the Don River to Jarvis Street is being actively studied by the City of Toronto.
The Toronto Island Airport is another neighbourhood issue. The airport, located to the south-west of the neighbourhood, is opposed by local community groups and some city politicians, including Toronto's mayor, as an impediment to the waterfront lands redevelopment. The airport, built in the 1930s, is utilized for regional air travel. The airport generates hundreds of noise complaints monthly to its operator, the Toronto Port Authority.[1] The Toronto Port Authority confirmed on September 12, 2008, that Porter Airlines was fined for breaking noise curfews in its operations at the Island Airport. A study by the Port Authority is being conducted into reducing noise from Porter's takeoffs and landings.[2]
Queen's Quay is currently a four-lane thoroughfare with a separate right-of-way for Toronto's streetcars. A development plan is proposed to modify the street further to provide a central section of the Martin Goodman Trail, a cyclist and recreational pathway along the waterfront.
East Bayfront
The 55-acre area east of Yonge Street, predominantly still industrial land, is slated for redevelopment as part of Waterfront Toronto's plans to create a residential and commercial district urban core near the lake. The area includes a 1.4 million square feet office and institutional zone on the dockside tract of East Bayfront. This section will consist of the nearly complete 450,000 square foot Corus Quay and soon-to-be started George Brown College's Health Sciences Campus.
In December 2009, Waterfront Toronto revealed the first major private sector development for the district, called Parkside. The $200 million residential development project, designed by Moshe Safdie and developed by Great Gulf Group of Companies, will be located on the northeast corner of Queen's Quay East and Sherbourne, south of the Gardiner Expressway and just east of the new Sherbourne Park.
References
- ^ "The Six Best Toronto Port Authority Noise Complaints". torontoist.com. http://torontoist.com/2008/08/the_best_toronto_port_authority_noise_complaints.php. Retrieved 2008-09-02.
- ^ "Port Authority refuses to rule out new ferry". The Globe and Mail. September 12, 2008. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080912.PORT11/TPStory/TPNational/Ontario/.
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