Students of George Brown College are about to get some premium lakefront property. Waterfront Toronto has announced that the college will build a new campus within the upcoming East Bayfront development on a .83 hectare (two-acre) site at the south side of Queens Quay Boulevard, flanked by Lower Jarvis and Lower Sherbourne [map]. The centre is scheduled for completion by 2011, and will house George Brown's Centre for Health Sciences. According to George Brown......

Though the official start of summer is still two weeks away, the mercury is already rising. With noticeably lower temperatures and a refreshing breeze, Toronto's waterfront is a great place to cool down. So whether you’re into sandcastles, swimming, or just reading under a shady tree, head down to the lake to beat the heat this summer. Illustration by Kevin McBride.......

Every Saturday morning, Historicist looks back at the events, places, and characters—good and bad—that have shaped Toronto into the city we know today. Photo of Sunnyside Beach in 1924 from Wikimedia Commons. When Sunnyside Amusement Park officially opened on June 28, 1922, it was grandly proclaimed to be ushering in a new era for the city. Addressing a crowd of thousands, R. Home Smith, chairman of the Toronto Harbour Commission, said that "Toronto is upon......

Photo by wvs from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. The ever-painful sight of the dilapidated pillars, scraggly grass, and utterly desolate concrete landscape of the Gardiner Expressway is enough to make even the most enthusiastic Torontonian sigh with annoyance. How to prevent these angry exhalations was the the topic of conversation Wednesday night at Harbourfont. As part of their Viewpoints series and in conjunction with the release of Spacing's latest issue, Car and the City,......

Waterfront Toronto considers corporate naming scheme. On the one hand, yes, it's a travesty. On the other hand, does anybody call the Skydome anything other than the Skydome, regardless of what Rogers wants us to call it? Feist sweeps the Junos, winning all five awards for which she was nominated. Feist wisely kept everything in perspective, explaining in her victory speech on Saturday (yes, the Junos, like all Canadian awards shows, stretch things out......

This evening, Toronto Culture and Fort York are unveiling a permanent public art installation under the Gardiner Expressway (off Fort York Boulevard, between Bathurst and Fleet Streets). In WATERTABLE, Toronto artists Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak use video and lights to create the effect of rippling water on the underside of the highway—a reminder that the Gardiner runs along what used to the original shoreline of Lake Ontario. Ever wonder why the the Toronto......

The verdict is in, and the umbrellas are going up! Following an invited competition to design a new public space for the Jarvis Slip, Waterfront Toronto has revealed the winner, unanimously chosen by the design jury: Claude Cormier Architectes Paysagistes Inc. As outlined in our competition coverage, the Cormier plan—dubbed "Sugar Beach"—will bring an HtO Park-style "urban beach" to the foot of Jarvis Street, dotted with charming steel umbrellas and Muskoka chairs. The sandy......

Moving insect legs! A dazzling shimmer wall! Faux beach, part deux! Waterfront Toronto has selected three proposals for the redevelopment of the Jarvis Street slip area, which currently features a dumpy, underutilized parking lot and not much else. Already part of the greater Waterfront Revitalization Plan, Lower Jarvis and Queen's Quay will soon be home to some new architecture (namely First Waterfront Place, the headquarters and studios of Corus Entertainment) and will be the......

How far would you have to walk up Yonge Street before passing 1,700 light poles? And would you count out 1,700 light poles if you didn't have good reason? Participants in the Toronto Environmental Alliance and David Suzuki Foundation's Smog Hike on Sunday, September 23 certainly have a good cause—raising awareness of the human cost of pollution—and will find out just how far they're willing to go. Starting at the waterfront, the hikers will......

There are more ways to walk and discover this city than just following the city’s Discovery Walk maps. There are an increasing number of guided audio tours that you can download from the Internet and pack into your digital music player before heading out on your expedition. One audio tour company, City Surf, has several neighbourhood tours available for about $10 each. Recently, City Surf teamed up with Waterfront Toronto to offer a free......

Do you wistfully dream of having a little corner of the city to call your own, but balk at the "Homes" section of the classifieds with its hyperbole-strewn ads and dead-eyed realtors? A new Google Maps-based website, housing123.com, tries to make things a little easier for potential home buyers across the GTA. The Canadian Real Estate Agency (CREA) operates a database known as the Multiple Listing Service (MLS), which allows realtors to view virtually......

Last month, we reported on the mammoth new film studio development being installed in the portlands—plans which included a flagship building designed by renowned British architect Will Alsop at the entrance to the complex. Alsop's renderings were just unveiled, and while not as brash as his OCAD "tabletop" building, the new Filmport landmark will be tough to ignore.......

The Toronto Star published a good article Sunday revealing that "the city's Waterfront Secretariat is now reviewing the recommendations and cost estimates of recent waterfront task forces on the fate of the Gardiner." Torontoist hears you asking, wasn't this the whole point of the Gardiner Report released last September? Now that the city has all but canned plans to tear down the elevated highway due to lack of funds, however, discussions are focussing on......

Occasionally Torontoist gets bitten by the camping bug. Unfortunately, we don’t always have the extra vacation days or access to a vehicle required for a Kawartha Lakes getaway. Then, of course, there’s the environmental irony of loading the minivan full of camping gear and burning dozens of litres of gas in order to enjoy nature. Luckily, there’s a quick camping fix right here in town. The Glen Rouge Campground is accessible by bicycle (about......

Last night at City Hall, Councillor Adam Vaughan conceded defeat in the fight to keep the John Street Roundhouse from becoming a big box retail outlet. He withdrew his motion [PDF] calling for a temporary freeze on the redevelopment of the Roundhouse into a Leon's outlet. The news derails a movement against the proposed furniture store that had been gathering steam recently. First, a Friends of the Roundhouse group, which included former Mayor David......

Garrison Creek once ran through Toronto from its tributaries near what is now St. Clair West, to what was once the shore of Lake Ontario, past the northeast side of Fort York. Development polluted the creek as Toronto began to grow, and in the early 1900s, work began on the burial of Garrison Creek. Long since converted into a sewer, Garrison Creek has completely disappeared from view. It has not, however, been forgotten. Evidence......

Can a transit system foster love for a city? Torontonians may scoff, but Londoners will nod. The underground—better known as the Tube—is often cited as a reason why so many Londoners take pride in their city. One trait of the Tube—and possibly something that Toronto can learn from—is the way in which stations are named after the city’s neighbourhoods and landmarks. A journey where you board at Notting Hill, travel past Marble Arch and St.......

"Water," Spacing's summer issue, is finally out, available at your favourite bookstores throughout the city. Devoted to "Toronto’s ravines, rivers, water towers, sewers, and waterfront," "Water" is intended to be "a snapshot of Toronto’s relationship with water and how it shapes our everyday lives." The sneak peeks inside the magazine (featuring some photography by the ever-awesome Miles Storey) look as gorgeous as ever, and we're itching to get our hands on a copy. Of......

Study finds that Ontario children's group homes are like jails. Managers of group homes dismissed charges that their homes were Dickensian by pointing out that their children are not highly skilled pickpockets. Yet. Supreme Court to hear Windsor man's "fly phobia" case. Waddah Mustapha found a fly in his bottled water in 2001, and claims to have suffered immense mental damage and a phobia of flies as a result. He was awarded over $300,000 in......

The Leslie Street Spit is a man-made stretch of land that juts into Lake Ontario. A good chunk of it was built from the debris of old bank buildings that had been razed to make way for projects like the Toronto Dominion Centre in the 1970s. The Leslie Spit is also the breeding ground for all kinds of migratory songbirds. It's like our feathered friends are dancing on the graves of the structures they......

Despite loud public complaints, Toronto City Council has begrudgingly approved Astral Media's street furniture bid with a few conditions: reduce the total amount of per square foot advertising, guarantee that all billboards follow city bylaws, estimate how much energy will be used illuminating advertisements, and ensure there is no loophole in the contract which would allow Astral to screw the city over. The council was more enthusiastic about endorsing a $159.5 million taxpayer-financed office......

From pristine wetland to industrial transportation hub and the confluence of major urban expressways, the Lower Don Lands area has gone through many changes throughout Toronto’s history. The mouth of the Don River is about to change again. Back in February, the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation announced a competition to redesign a 40-hectare area located at the mouth of the river and the entrance to the Port Lands (pictured right). The teams invited to......

Yesterday the City of Toronto unveiled the designs submitted for the "Coordinated Street Furniture Program," its plan to grant a billboard company a twenty-year monopoly on providing and maintaining bus shelters, garbage bins, benches, and other items for Toronto’s sidewalks. The "renderings" have been posted on the City website as epic PDFs, but our friend Joe Clark has also extracted the images from the PDFs and posted them to his Flickr account for convenient......

The Star's website is reporting that at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow morning, the TTC will announce details of a plan to blanket the city in a network of sixty to eighty kilometres of Light Rapid Transit (or LRT, as it's affectionately called). The cost, according to Giambrone, will be an anything-but-light $30 million per kilometer, which puts the price range for the new lines between $1.8 and $2.4 billion. The TTC hopes to get the......

We'd like to start this week's run-down by wishing a very happy birthday to parent blog Gothamist, which turned four on Friday. If it wasn't for them, the rest of us wouldn't be here. They celebrated their birthday by nabbing an interview with Entourage star Adrian Grenier, who misses NYC public transportation when he's working in LA. They also reported on NYU students protesting a band whose name is also known as a slur, the......

Then you'll love Lake Ontario Park! At least, that would seem to be a reasonable assumption. However, if you're looking for more reassurance (recommended), the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation (or, NAMBLA) is hosting a public forum on their plans for "Lake Ontario Park," which is to be "one of Toronto's great new park spaces and a defining destination for the city," running from the Portlands (Cherry St. south of the Distillery District) in the west......

With Labour Day having come and gone, and autumn's chill making too many appearances, Toronto's waterfront is now just a memory of a summer fling. Who are we kidding... even during the summer the waterfront leaves much to be desired. However, with the summer's announcement of West 8's winning waterfront revitalization design, who knows... perhaps this time something will actually happen! Regardless, before breaking any major ground on the project, the waterfront's future is still......

David Miller was reelected Mayor of Toronto with almost 57 per cent of the vote. Voter turnout increased to 41.1 per cent. Full election results for all wards are available on the Toronto website. Miller used his acceptance speech to make his promises clear. Rather than use the new City of Toronto Act to add new taxes, Miller will be asking for 1 cent of the sales tax generated by Toronto from the provincial and......

Following-up on this morning’s news of a last-minute deal to save Toronto’s bid for the 2015 World’s Fair, it’s now being reported that Toronto’s bid for Expo 2015 (doesn’t have the same ring as Expo ’86, does it?) is dead in the water. Is this good news? Bad news? Are you indifferent about it? Would this have been a key cog in the revitalization of the waterfront? Was it worth a projected deficit of $700......

As pointed out by an astute reader, Spacing Wire and Ward 20 candidate Chris Ouellette's blog, there exists another option (that has been getting little media attention) for solving the dual waterfront barriers of the rail tracks and the Gardiner Expressway: the Toronto Waterfront Viaduct. The proposal calls for a massive, attractive, elevated structure supported by pylons and cables that carries CN, VIA and GO rail traffic, east-west automobile traffic, pedestrians, cyclists and light rail......