Airport to park: a bold vision for the Toronto Island

Is Toronto a place where big ideas can take hold? This week, a decision on Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport will point to an answer.

City council is set to vote Wednesday on an extension to the main runway at the airport, located on the Toronto Islands. City staff recommend that the city should approve that work, but make no change to the airport’s operating agreement, set to expire in 2033.

But Ports Toronto, the federal agency that runs the airport, aims to use procedural games and bogus data to ram through an unnecessary 40-year extension to the agreement. Some at city hall, including councillors Shelley Carroll and Jennifer McKelvie, seem ready to accept this song-and-dance.

It is time to stop and think: What else could these 85 hectares be? The landscape architects of PUBLIC WORK see the site as a gathering place and a link to Toronto Island Park.

“The islands are Toronto’s defining public space,” said Marc Ryan, a co-founder of the firm, in a recent interview. “Almost anything can happen there. The question is: What do you want it to be?”

Toronto lacks a design office or chief architect; in recent years, it has shown no capacity to imagine bold physical change. So The Globe and Mail asked PUBLIC WORK to reimagine the airport. The firm has designed The Bentway, University Park and an award-winning parks plan for downtown Toronto.

This exploration begins with a simple observation: The airport lands are right there, just 100 metres across the water from the fast-growing downtown. With the airport closed, existing ferries and underground tunnel could provide reliable year-round access to the island. From here, electric buses could serve the entire length of the Island Park.

A GRANDER VISION

However, there are other ways to redesign this site. The key point is that this is an enormous blank slate. Think of Rail Deck Park, the billion-dollar dream project of the John Tory era; it would have been 8.5 hectares. The airport is 10 times the size, not far away, and ready to be occupied.

“The opportunity here is to demonstrate that the city isn’t static,” Mr. Ryan argues. “The city can take action. It can regain parks and public realm from other infrastructure as the city grows and changes.”

It can. But will it?

This year, the city’s parks department completed a “master plan” for Toronto Island Park. That plan, by local consultants DTAH, was vague and utterly unambitious. It ignored the airport.

This is typical. Over 250 years, city hall has lacked vision for the physical city, and it shows. In the past decade, despite a thousand well-meant planning studies, private interests and car infrastructure have won battles for public space in the heart of the city.

The ravaging of Ontario Place, the waste of Exhibition Place, the indefensible rebuild of the Gardiner Expressway, and a half-forgotten plan to make the Don Valley a park: all of them missed opportunities. Each was a chance for Toronto to assert what it is all about, to show visitors and investors the city’s vibrancy and to make space for its citizens to gather and dream.

Now the city has another chance to reach for the sky. Will it take off?