PARKS IN CRISIS part 5: The system

worked (slowly) for a west end park

APRIL 17, 2015 | BY KIMBERLEY NOBLE

On a warm spring afternoon, the park on the corner of Sorauren and

Wabashavenues in the west Toronto neighbourhood of Parkdale looks
like a perfect dream of urban open space: a city block of green
bordered by tree-lined streets, families with strollers, kids playing
lacrosse, and neighbours mingling at the farmers market whose winter
home is in an early 20th-century brick office building thats now a
renovated fieldhouse. Theres even a guy on stilts making balloon
animals.
By all appearances, this park the go-to spot for thousands of
residents in a fast-growing neighbourhood looks like a triumph of
good planning and community engagement. The park even gets a lot

of the credit for new investment pouring into a formerly industrial

corner of Parkdale.
Sorauren Park bounded by Sorauren Avenue, Wabash Avenue and
the railway tracks that will soon carry passengers to Pearson Airport
is, in fact, all those things.
Its most recent expansion, the creation of whats called the Sorauren
Park Town Square, is one a handful of recent parks projects all of
them partnerships between the city, local residents and philanthropic
funders that are heralded as the shining examples of the citys parks
policy and resource allocation. How is it that civilization stays
together? Ward 14 city councillor Gord Perks asked at the Town
Square opening last summer. The answer is right here behind you.
But its also an astonishing example of the hurdles and hoops the city
throws up as obstacles for even the most deserving and forwardlooking parks projects and their hard-working supporters.
The neighbourhood has these facilities because open space activists
have spent two decades jumping as well as bowing, scraping,
baking, schmoozing and strategizing to assemble the crazy-quilt of
funding required to create high-functioning open space.
They even managed to pry loose a small amount of Section 42 money,
which makes them the only small park partnership project in recent
years to tap into vast parkland reserve fund that the city has been
sitting on, like some municipal Smaug hoarding dwarf gold.
Even so, the city is still asking local activists to sweat for every park
amenity, right down to the benches and the bicycle rings they are
currently in the process of adding to the new square.
When Spacing set out to find Toronto park development success stories
that were exceptions to the citys reluctance to allocate funds to parks
projects, we were repeatedly pointed toward such partnerships.

Yet many of these projects are modest playground expansions in

suburban areas far from the downtown wards that generated tens of
millions in park levies. They include the $350,000-plus rebuilding of the
Jamie Bell Adventure Playground in High Park; $200,000 spent to buy
and plant black cedars to restore the Hedge Maze on Centre Island;
and a $250,000 multi-use rejuvenation of the Rotary Peace Park on
Lake Ontario in New Toronto.
But the $405,000 Sorauren Park Town Square is the only partnership
that drew on the Section 42 funding. Of that total, only slightly more
than 10%$48,000came out of the parkland reserves.
The neighbourhood, led first by long-time residents and community
parks activists, has waged a fierce and lengthy battle for every square
metre of green space and recreational improvements in a space that
served, until the early 1990s, as a TTC bus repair yard, and was
destined to become a new mega-facility for public works.
Residents fought that plan until the city capitulated. It spent $1.2
million to clean up the industrial contamination on the property. Parks
contractors covered the 2.4 ha brownfield site with soil, planted trees,
and built a baseball diamond and tennis courts.
Then, almost as soon as the park opened in 1995, neighbourhood
residents launched a campaign to persuade the city to renovate the
linseed oil complex into a recreational centre for the under-served
community, which had begun attracting new residents and millions of
dollars in loft conversion investment.
The city bought the old Canada Linseed Oil Mills buildings for $2-million
in 2000. But, pleading poverty, the city maintained it could not afford
the $20 million-plus investment in the recreation centre, and even
sought proposals for a public-private partnership that would see
condos built on the site to help finance recreational facilities.

The sole P3 proposal proved unfeasible. But it showed the Sorauren

activists they could not risk waiting for the cityor risk seeing the
linseed property sold to a developer. They set up an incorporated
entity to carry the plan forward, establishing the Wabash Building
Society (WBS) to raise money for park improvements themselves.

WBS decided to start small. The group proposed a $400,000 renovation

of the derelict linseed oil administrative office a charming brick
building with deco-style features that once operated as an after-hours
speakeasy into a fieldhouse. After it opened in 2008, the City of
Toronto and the Wabash Building Society were awarded Canadian
Urban Institutes Brownie Award for successfully converting a
brownfield site for community use.
The City directed Section 37 funds from nearby loft development
projects to improve the fieldhouse, now in constant use by community
groups. This project provided the Wabash Building Society with a track

record when it came time to tackle the next stage of their park reno
plan.
It also taught them the value of taking what long-time members call
baby steps. In 2009, the WBS set out to raise the $405,000 needed
to transform land that had once held the linseed companys grain
elevator into a 2127-metre square that can be used for local events,
such as dances and outdoor films, as well as the farmers market.
When this new town square was officially opened last summer, its
funding story could be seen clearly on the banner thanking donors:
somewhere close 200 names, the culmination of five years of bake
sales and funds donated in memory of loved ones who had themselves
loved the park.
The largest sum, $155,000, came from City of Toronto capital funding.
Other contributions included $125,000 from a Live Green grant;
$61,000 from the Wabash Building Societys Reserve Fund; $16,000
from community fundraising and the Toronto Parks and Trees
Foundation; and $48,000 from the Section 42 parkland fund.
How did the Wabash Building Society manage to score that cash?
Sorauren Park activists praise their elected representatives, especially
Ward 14 councillor Perks, for paving a pragmatic and principled way to
City Hall. Hes been a brick, said neighbourhood realtor Chander
Chaddah, who has been on the Wabash Building Society board since its
inception. Perks, in turn, credits former Ward 27 councillor Kyle Rae for
teaching him how to successfully negotiate access to municipal
funding on behalf of constituents.

Strategic civic panhandling

Win win win has been the WBS mantra for whats now going on a
decade. (Its been a bit of a process, Chaddah said, but an
enjoyable and happy process.) Yet the strategic panhandling

continues. Sorauren Park Town Square has been the recipient of

$10,000 from the TD Banks Friends of the Environment foundation,
money used to purchase and plant 48 new trees and shrubs, which will
be cared for by community volunteers over the next two years.
According to Rob Richardson, manager of Torontos PFR Partnership
Development office, Sorauren Park activists recently raised an
additional $11,400 for six new benches for the town square. In
addition, Metrolinx which will soon operate UP Express along the
parks eastern boundary provided $1,000 for 12 bike rings. The next
community fundraising phase is aimed at building a trellis on one side
of the square as well as an open-air community bake oven.
The strategy during the Ford administration was to keep public
investment in community parks development under the radar. We
snuck this into the budget so that the person elected four years ago
never found out, Perks said at the July, 2014, Town Square opening.
The plan, parks supporters confided, has been to keep funding tiny
projects that inch across the park until they are back to where this
group started a decade ago: at the factory building the WBS has
always hoped would some day become a community centre.
As of last week, it looks like the Sorauren Park activists will get what
they want. The process that Perks calls incrementally recapturing and
building on this space over a generation has paid off. City council has
allocated $34-million toward the design and construction of the
Wabash Community Centre in its 2014 to 2023 capital budget. The
project is now seventh on a list of eight approved community centres
for under-served Toronto neighbourhoods.
The community is cautiously optimistic. While the news is
encouraging, the WBS wrote on buildwabashnow.org blog, the
community centre has been a line item in the Citys budget since at
least 2000.

The moral of the Sorauren Park story is that even the most effective
communities must recognize that creating a new full-service public
park is something to be done for the next generation. WBS activists
praise themselves for their fortitude, but they also point out that the
children that were in utero during the inaugural meetings are now old
enough to attend meetings as young adults. All the stars have to
align, one of the WBS founders said. Sometimes it takes a long time
for that to happen.
Perks, for his part, said the city needs to adopt a completely new
mindset about open space. Its a public infrastructure issue. People
have start thinking of parks the way they think of sidewalks.
Part 1: All built up but no place to grow
Part 2: Where the money flows
Part 3: The perils of cash-in-lieu
Part 3 sidebar: Section 42 explained
Part 4: The tale of two parks
Part 5: The system worked (slowly) for a west end park
Part 6: Are privately-owned public spaces the answer to parks deficit?

2 COMMENTS
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right to edit or delete comments entirely. See our Comment Policy.

1.

John
11 MONTHS AGO

Continuing our cities parks crisis, it was announced today that Moss Park will be
having a complete makeover and the 519 will be building the first LGBTQ rec
centre on the site. This will likely take a few years to complete at some cost to
the city after years of the LGBTQ community pursuing this goal. The public
generally feels awful about this outcome as it did not occur in a short time frame,
and required hard work. A man related to the project expressed his dismay at the
parks crisis, expressing his dismay that he couldnt have the park in 20 minutes
or less.
2.
m.b.
11 MONTHS AGO

soarauren park is a great success story in a community fighting for park space. I
remember trying to break in to the ttc yard to explore when i was a kid. The thing
that baffles my mind is that it has taken so much effort to raise money to improve
this park yet recently the city spent over 2 million$ to buy an old plaxa qt queen
st. And callender ave to build of all things a new parking lot. And even more
recently paid a few million dollars for a tiny new park at king and dufferin. I grew
up in parkdale and have never heard of anyone asking the city to spend millions
to buy a tiny new park While down the road at sorauren the residents are fighting
for every dollar they can get. And how about those 2000$ benches. Please. They
could have been built by talented locals for a fraction of the cost. Regardless of
all the bureacratic hurdles the community has rallied to create a great park that is
unrecognizeable from the scrap yard i remember as a kid
Comments are closed.

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