Fourth Street Lake Window - W.A.V.E. (Waterfront Access and Views for Everyone): June 2014

Monday 30 June 2014

CANADA DAY DOWN AT THE FOURTH STREET "LAKE WINDOW"

Some residents of Fourth Street enjoying the cool lake breezes on a hot Canada Day down at the newly liberated "lake window" at the bottom of their street.

Local residents have been clearing some of the dense shrubbery that encroached on this public land and that, for decades, had prevented people from approaching the water and enjoying this wonderful spot. (For comparison, look at the picture on this blog's header.) There is more clearing and opening up planned for the future as the community at large engages more in the stewardship of this precious piece of our waterfront.

There is a petition in circulation that requests the City of Toronto to formally create a waterfront parkette at this location. If you wish to sign the petition, please contact us at fourthstreetlakewindow@gmail.com

We have a long way to go yet to get the same amenity that other road ends in South Etobicoke already have.

Petition .......

We, the undersigned, petition the City of Toronto to create a waterfront parkette at the southern end of Fourth Street on the publicly owned, unassumed road allowance as envisioned in the former Borough of Etobicoke’s “Windows on the Lake” initiative.
We demand the same waterfront feature that the residents of Lake Crescent and Miles Road in Mimico enjoy at their road end “lake windows”.
As reflected in the City of Toronto’s “Official Plan”, public visual and physical access to the lake at every opportunity is our “lakeshore” community’s heritage as well as the right of Waterfront Trail users and other City of Toronto residents.

1994 Etobicoke "Windows on the Lake" parkette plan for Fourth Street

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.