Fourth Street Lake Window - W.A.V.E. (Waterfront Access and Views for Everyone): July 2012

Tuesday 17 July 2012

CITY COUNCIL ADOPTS HERITAGE REPORT

On Thursday, July 12th, 2012, City Council voted unanimously to adopt the Heritage Report which included Councillor Milczyn's motion (see previous post).

It also included a very minor amendment put forward by Councillor Ainslie that calls for more public input in to heritage designations through a Community Preservation Panel.

You can view the motions and votes that went along with this item here (PG 16.10).

City Council has directed staff to conduct a public open house on the proposed Official Plan heritage policies in September of 2012.

More on that to follow.

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.