Fourth Street Lake Window Community Group

Goals

To remove the barrier of large shrubs on the Fourth Street, unnassumed road allowance which blocks the community’s visual and physical access to the lake and which encroaches on and, effectively, privatizes City land.
To create a community, lakeside parkette consistent with the existing plan already surveyed and designed for this location under the former City of Etobicoke’s “Windows on the Lake” initiative and which aligns with the City’s current Official Plan’s policies on waterfront open space.
To have this Fourth Street Parkette designated an official park under the jurisdiction of the City of Toronto Parks Department with maintenance and stewardship shared by the community and the City.
To network with other groups along the shore who have similar encroachment issues at their lakefront road ends and work with them to bring about the development of more waterfront parkettes managed by City Parks through the implementation of the “Window on the Lake” initiative for all of South Etobicoke’s lake windows.

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BACKGROUND

We are a community group of residents whose goal is to lobby the City of Toronto Parks department to take over the remaining publicly-owned lakefront road ends in South Etobicoke that are not yet official parks or parkettes and complete the vision of the former “Windows on the Lake” initiative which dovetail with waterfront access goals reflected in our City's current Official Plan. Fourth Street parkette was to have been the first project under that plan with a landscape design drawn up and ready to go. It was stalled and disappeared during the amalgamation of the City's former boroughs. But, since then, many road ends (unassumed road allowances) have been taken over by City Parks who improved them and now maintain them. But, five road ends, including Fourth Street, remain unclaimed and subject to illegal encroachment. Along the shore line in south Etobicoke, of the forty-eight roads that end at the lake, only five do not end at a waterfront park or parkette (Fourth Street, Eleventh street, Twenty-Fifth street, Thirty-Ninth street and Fortieth street). Less than 5% do not end in a waterfront park or parkette. This is unfair and needs to be corrected.