Fourth Street Lake Window - W.A.V.E. (Waterfront Access and Views for Everyone): May 2016

Monday 30 May 2016

AFTER 7 MONTHS, ANOTHER REMINDER TO COUNCILLOR GRIMES THAT WE WISH TO HAVE A MEETING WITH HIM - THIS LETTER WAS SIGNED BY 17 RESIDENTS OF FOURTH STREET AND LAKE SHORE DRIVE

May 30th, 2016

Dear Councillor Grimes
(cc'd Mayor John Tory)

It has been almost seven months since we sent you our response to Michelle Telfeyan’s email concerning the waterfront area at the south end of Fourth Street. We sent it on October 2^nd, 2015, and have not yet received acknowledgement from your office.

The response referred to above, as well as Michelle’s email, are attached to this email.

As you know, a number of residents on Fourth Street have formed a group called Fourth Street WAVE (Waterfront Access and Views for Everyone). We wish to see a Lake Window parkette established at the foot of our street on the unassumed road allowance as envisaged by the former City of Etobicoke and currently reflected in the City of Toronto’s Official Plan.

We did our research and presented our thoughts in a detailed, thorough and reasoned manner. We referenced the initiative of the former Etobicoke municipality, the City’s own Official Plan as it relates to green space on the waterfront, the City’s newly adopted policies on the safeguarding of heritage vistas of the lake as well as lake window precedents already in place along the Ward 6 shoreline. We referenced decades’ long issues of encroachment. We even referenced your own supportive motion at Community Council to look in to whether road allowances can be transferred for park purposes. (All of this has been archived on our website http://fourthstreetlakewindow.blogspot.ca/)

Needless to say, we are confused and disappointed that our simple and sincere request for a meeting to discuss with you the points we raise has not yet materialized.
We urge you to take us up on this and, to repeat what we said in our response, we love our street and community and are really excited about the future potential of our own “lake window”. We are heartened by your statements and the vision of the former government and are confident that, by working together, its potential can be eventually realized.

Given how much time has passed without any reply from your office, we expect to have this communication promptly acknowledged and to receive your response within a couple of weeks.

Sincerely,
Fourth Street Wave (Waterfront Access for Everyone) fourthstreetwave@outlook.com

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.