‘It’s hard for even planning staff to get their heads around’: Five ways Downsview’s massive redevelopment will change the face of the city

“The scale of the opportunity is the headline,” for the 540 acres unlocked by Bombardier’s departure, says Sarah Phipps, the city planner overseeing the project.

The city’s 30-year plan, with fellow large landowners Northcrest Developments and Canada Lands, a federal Crown corporation, envisions 115,000 new residents — roughly the population of Peterborough or Niagara Falls — and 52,000 new jobs on the swath of land north of Highway 401 and west of Allen Road.

“It’s hard for even planning staff to get their heads around” how big they can think for Downsview, Phipps says, noting the site is even larger than Toronto’s other massive redevelopment that is well underway in the Port Lands.

For Downsview, she says, “because we’re designing the roads, buildings, parks — everything — we’re able to set the whole community up in a way that maximizes green infrastructure, community development, walking, cycling and transit.”

Here are five key features of plans for the live-work-play neighbourhoods:

Bombardier’s last jet screamed into the sky from Downsview on March 23 as the company moved to a new plant near Pearson airport.

The Star recently visited the 2.1-kilometre decommissioned blacktop, which, end to end, is about the distance of Yonge Street from Front to Bloor streets. Thanks to elevation, the former airstrip provides a commanding view south to midtown, the buildings at Bloor and Yonge streets, and the CN Tower.

Chris Eby, Northcrest’s executive vice-president, says the “pedestrianized boulevard and community space will serve as the connective tissue for the new neighbourhoods being built.” It will eventually feature parkettes, cafes and public art as well as performance spaces, skating trails and restaurant patios. Bits of the strip awaiting redevelopment will host temporary uses, such as festivals and markets.

Phipps says a series of parks will connect to the runway, which will be off-limits to vehicles. “That is different than what we have anywhere else, even along the waterfront — it’s the only place where we have this kind of scale,” she says. “It’s going to take a while to develop but it’s going to attract people from all over the city.”

The only lowrise housing will likely be some stacked townhouses to act as a buffer with the existing Ancaster neighbourhood. “Single-family homes wouldn’t get the job done,” to meet targets set by the province and the city, Eby says. “We need places for our kids and grandkids to live.”

All of the districts will require affordable housing, ranging from seven per cent to 20 per cent depending on ownership. The city is looking at opportunities for “deeply affordable” and rent-geared-to-income units. Forty per cent of total units will have two or more bedrooms, encouraging family use rather than towers full of the single-bedroom units favoured by investors.

Northcrest, Eby says, is “planning for a range of housing options: different income levels; different stages of life, including families, students and seniors; plus rental and ownership options.” The redevelopment will also include housing with supports for people escaping homelessness.

Planned amenities to service the new residents include schools, child-care centres, community space, community recreation centres, a library and permanent public art. There is a question mark over funding, however, thanks to new provincial government limits on what municipalities can charge developers to help fund services for new residents.

“Due to recent changes to the Planning Act, the Community Benefits Charge will be insufficient to fund the full package of community benefits required to support 115,000 new residents anticipated for Downsview over 30 years,” according to a city report. “Other funding sources may be leveraged to fill any gap for provision of these facilities.”

The original plan for Villiers Island, being built in the Port Lands, was criticized for inadequate housing density given the size of the site and the scope of Toronto’s housing crisis. Phipps says she believes Downsview’s planned density is appropriate, adding it’s higher than in the Railway Lands development near the Rogers Centre.

To give the residents places to work, shop and eat, the non-city partners are required to build a total of one-million square metres of non-residential space.

So far, says Mark Richardson of advocacy group HousingNowTO, Downsview density targets look appropriate, but the scale and guarantees of affordability on the federal lands that make up part of the site need to be “locked in stone.”

“We’ve spent billions of dollars putting transit from Wilson Avenue up to Vaughan — we need to now exploit the government-owned lands adjacent to those transit stations to deliver all kinds of housing at speed, at scale, with the affordable rental component that the city needs.”

You might not associate the former manufacturing site of luxury business jets with environmental innovation. Downsview developers are hoping to change that.

“The plan is to have the Northcrest lands become one of the first master-planned communities in Canada powered entirely by electricity, with no on-site use of fossil fuels,” Eby says. “Heating and cooling will be done using technologies such as geothermal exchange. As well, stormwater will be managed on-site using green infrastructure such as parks, grasslands and landscaped areas.”

Phipps says building from the ground up gives planners a chance to incorporate into parks and other public spaces ”bioswales” — landscape features that collect polluted stormwater runoff, soak it into the ground, and filter out pollution. “When we have big, big storm events,” she says, “we’re able to use parks as dry ponds and that opens up a whole bunch of land because we don’t have to use stormwater ponds.”

Unlike most real-estate projects, the Downsview redevelopment plan is unfolding with social-justice principles, including Indigenous reconciliation and confronting anti-Black racism, built in from the start. City staff are overseeing a community development plan to “support social, economic and cultural development within defined neighbourhoods or geographic boundaries as well as tools and commitments made by the property owners to deliver a complete, thriving, equitable and resilient community.”

Much of the Indigenous community engagement is focused on the need for affordable housing, jobs and economic opportunities, as well as a new community development plan, says Bob Goulais, an Anishinaabe from Nipissing First Nation acting as a consultant on the project.

“The city and proponents also heard the importance of meaningfully and collaboratively including Indigenous culture and design elements in parks, natural spaces, community spaces, and creating new ceremonial spaces,” adds Goulais.

Goulais says he foresees a Downsview community “inclusive of Indigenous Peoples, that appreciates our needs and ways of life, and is filled with First Nations, Métis and Inuit that live, work and enjoy this community of the future.”

Mark Tenaglia, executive director of skilled trades group The Oaks Revitalization Association, says he’s working with Northcrest on a program to give people from neighbourhoods such as Jane-Finch and Lawrence Heights construction training through LIUNA Local 183 and possibly other unions. The trainees, including those who have had trouble with the law, can move into full-time construction jobs at Downsview and other sites that will pay six-figure salaries with pensions and benefits, he says.

The site will have a cycling “highway” and walking paths — three kilometres long and between 15 and 18 metres wide — dubbed the Green Spine.

The full corridor will eventually run from Sheppard Avenue West, in the north end of the redevelopment area, along the western edges of former National Defence lands and the TTC’s Wilson Yards, and connect to Dufferin Street in the south.

The Green Spine, which will have trees, other foliage and public art including murals, is intended to encourage residents to cycle or walk, rather than drive, to transit stations. That’s key to efforts to make the new districts less car-centric than surrounding communities.

Currently, about 75 per cent of trips in the area are by vehicle. The goal is to flip that within the redevelopment so three-quarters of the trips are by bike, foot or transit. “We can actually do that because we have subway stations, plus a GO station that will take you downtown in 22 minutes,” Phipps says. “We’re designing the community with the aim of making that easy, that will make that the obvious choice.”

At a recent city hall meeting, Coun. Dianne Saxe, a former Ontario environment commissioner, urged city staff to get the infrastructure in place right at the start, lest new residents get used to driving and continue out of habit. Phipps says she is aware of the concern and that the TTC has said it will run buses from Wilson subway station into the first developed district, which will be the farthest from already established transit.

“We are absolutely going to build this community so that people can work there, they can go to school there, shop there, without driving,” Phipps says. “I think people will look to be able to live in a different way (but) it will take time to get those services there — it’s a 30-year development.”