Nine condo towers, 6,000+ units planned for ill-fated Rail Deck Park site
CBC
Developers led by a businessman close to Premier Doug Ford want to build nine condo towers over a railway corridor in downtown Toronto, a site that former mayor John Tory envisioned as a kind of Central Park for the city.
The plan, dubbed Rail Deck District, would see towers as high as 65 storeys on the rail corridor south of Front Street, between Blue Jays Way and Bathurst Street.
The developers are dangling the possibility that as much as half the property could become park land, but city officials are hinting the price tag could be too high.
"We're looking for more answers," said Ausma Malik, the city councillor for the downtown ward of Spadina-Fort York. "I'm fighting to get as much of this development as possible to be publicly accessible green space."
The consortium of companies behind the plan is CKF Rail Development Ltd. Partnership. The lead company in CKF is Craft Development Corp., which purchased the air rights to build over the rail lines from CN Rail in 2013.
CKF's plans are for nine condo towers ranging from 20 to 65 storeys, with a total of 6,126 residential units. The project's two tallest towers would be higher than the tallest office tower in The Well, the new development just north of the rail lines, on the former site of the Globe and Mail.
The plan comes two years after Tory's dreams of turning the entire site into Rail Deck Park were dashed in 2021 by a ruling from the province's Local Planning Appeal Tribunal (now called the Ontario Land Tribunal).
That decision required the city to consider a development proposal for the site.
"An unelected, unaccountable provincial tribunal made a ruling that allowed for development to happen here," said Malik during an interview on the pedestrian bridge that crosses the rail lines.
Last year, CKF presented what it called the Rail Deck Reset: 11 towers, with the tallest exceeding 70 storeys.
City officials said they had "fundamental concerns" about that plan, and the developers unveiled a revision this spring, with two fewer towers and more space between them.
The developers are now proposing to give the city 1.2 hectares in roughly the centre of the seven-hectare site to be a park.
The developers are also floating the idea that two other parcels of land (totalling another 2.3 hectares) at either end of that park could be a "potential city-owned park expansion.".
If that happens, the city would have an unbroken stretch of green space from Spadina Ave. to Bathurst St. covering roughly half the rail deck site.
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