Political leaders behind a project that would reshape Toronto's Leslieville neighbourhood, refashioning it as core to the city's transit system, visited the site Tuesday to celebrate the groundbreaking of the future East Harbour transit hub.
The transit hub, as officials refer to it, is being built immediately east of the southernmost part of the Don Valley Parkway, where it curves into the Gardiner Expressway in downtown Toronto. Once the Ontario Line is complete, East Harbour will serve as an interchange for passengers of the new TTC line and GO trains.
At a news conference held at the construction site, Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow each said that East Harbour is expected to serve “100,000” daily riders, making it the city’s “second-busiest” transit station, behind only Union Station.
The federal, provincial and municipal governments are all chipping in taxpayer funds for the project. They announced in early March that the province had signed a contract with a joint venture between AtkinsRéalis (formerly SNC-Lavalin), Bird Construction and Hatch Ltd. to build the future transit hub.
The East Harbour station will also be the middle stop along the 15-station, 15.6-kilometre Ontario Line, one of the Ford government's signature projects. The mostly below-ground rail line will stretch from Exhibition Place, across and beyond downtown Toronto to Don Mills. Work on it has been underway for a few years, and Metrolinx is aiming to complete the line — the transit agency's most ambitious undertaking ever — by 2031.
The Ontario Line's cost was originally announced at just under $11 billion but has since almost tripled.
East Harbour is also important to the Ford government’s transit-oriented communities (TOCs) plan, which has grown into a key aspect of its wider agenda.
It’s worked on plans for potentially dozens of TOCs over the last several years. Each one that’s been announced is set to include hundreds to thousands of new housing units in dense, mixed-use developments around GO or subway stations.
Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma said this month that TOCs planned by the government will include “340,000 new homes,” an amount that would be one-fifth of its overarching housing target.
Infrastructure Ontario will be looking to contract builders for at least nine TOC projects in the next couple of years, according to the Crown agency’s recent market update.
The East Harbour TOC is different from many others, as the site on which it is planned is privately owned. Cadillac Fairview purchased the roughly 38-acre site in 2019.
It was also one of the earliest TOCs announced by the Ford government in 2021. It was supposed to be one of the first to get underway, as well, but has suffered delays in recent years.
Cadillac Fairview’s plan is to surround the East Harbour transit hub with about 15 new buildings, ranging from 30 to 70 storeys high, including more than 4,000 new housing units, commercial space, and more.
On Tuesday, the infrastructure minister explained that the TOC project’s delay is due to a few elements. Factors she spoke about included the need for preliminary site-servicing, flood protection work, and road work to be completed, along with an “ongoing discussion” happening between the provincial and municipal governments with Cadillac Fairview about its project.
“A big portion of this redevelopment was going to include commercial space, but we know that commercial vacancies in Toronto are the highest they've ever been, and so we’re looking to make some amendments in order to grow the number of residential units here on the site,” Surma said. “These conversations are supported by the mayor, and we will continue to move forward in these tough market conditions.”
