Derelict Delights is a weekly series where we look at abandoned buildings begging for revitalization. This week: Architect Ken Greenberg shares his vision of building a new kind of community with the empty structures and spaces along the West Toronto Railpath.
Is it possible to create a thriving neighbourhood around a bike path?
Urban-design guru Ken Greenberg thinks so. The architect and author of Walking Home: The Life and Lessons of a City Builder sees great promise in the underused properties that run alongside the West Toronto Railpath.
“It’s potentially a new kind of neighbourhood for Toronto, one that is primarily oriented not to a street, but to a multi-use trail,” he says. “And it’s really stitching together a whole bunch of existing neighbourhoods.”
From the south, the West Toronto Railpath begins at Dundas and Sterling (the infamous intersection where cyclist Jenna Morrison was killed last November), then runs north along the corridor through Bloor to just past Dupont, ending at Cariboo Avenue. The plan is to extend the Railpath all the way downtown towards the Liberty Village area (eventually) but, for the moment, it’s a shortcut used by bikers, walkers, joggers and stroller-pushers seeking a car-free way through the city.
While some of the buildings that line the Railpath are currently in use, Greenberg believes the handful of abandoned buildings along the way have good bones and great potential. ”They are terrific buildings, and there’s a whole variety of them, different sizes and shapes,” he says.
One towering, multi-storey, derelict brick building (pictured above) near Dundas West is surrounded by a massive empty lot, another (pictured below) located on the west side and connected to the railpath by a bridge) is a solid-looking, three-storey brick structure that looks to have been industrial at one time.
Closer to Dupont, a mostly-empty storage facility with broken windows (pictured below) seems screams out for conversion into loft-style housing.
Greenberg sees these vacant buildings being developed into a combination of housing, retail and business uses, creating a “true mixed-use community.”
“If you combine the buildings and the open spaces with the fact that crossing this corridor is a whole series of existing subway lines, a GO stop at Bloor Street and streetcar lines, this is a fantastic oportunity for growth of a new, mixed-use community to occur, occupying these buildings, along with new buildings in the vacant lots,” he says. Some of the vacant lots could be turned into public spaces for residents—parks, playgrounds, community centres—making the area attractive to new families.
For this kind of new community to be realized, the City of Toronto would ultimately need to become involved, says Greenberg. Neighbourhood-building requires an overall plan, rather than simply developers tackling one-off projects. But given that the City has very few resources to allocate to this type of project, Greenberg envisions a combination of local community initiatives and private developers working with the City.
“It’s a real opportunity for this phrase ‘smart growth,’ for adding people, jobs and places in the most sustainable way possible,” says Greenberg. “You’re putting people in a position where not only do they have access to transit, but active transportation, in places where it’s not going to disturb any of the existing neighbourhoods.
“In fact, it’s using sites that were really sort of an unpleasant back edge to the neighbourhood, and turning them into a new front on this railpath.”
