Kudos to the city for its extensive public consultations during the design process for the new Regent Park community centre. Flyers for Feb, March and April meetings were delivered door-to-door to the surrounding neighbourhood (presumably to Regent Park residents as well). Detailed plans don’t always appear on the city’s website on a timely basis, but when asked, the city has provided us with details, which we have shared on trefann.org.

The preferred design was presented on April 7:  the new Regent Park community centre will be “L-shaped”, and attached to the Nelson Mandela Park Public (”Park Public”) School, so that the school and community can both share the combined “hub” space. The school will be closed in June 2010 for an extensive, two year renovation “to accommodate 660 pupil places, a full day kindergarten, and child care centre”. The plans also show a “multi-faith” room, which seems peculiar for a public school.
In Feb 2010 we asked an obvious question:   why not put the pool, gym and other athletic facilities planned for Regent Park, in a single building?  Seems reasonable and cost effective - should reduce overall construction costs and reduce ongoing staffing/operational costs). Combined “pool+gym” facilities work well in the nearby St. Lawrence and Jimmie Simpson Rec Centres. Putting the pool in this new community centre location would mean easy access for “Park Public” schoolkids, for school swim lessons. “No, we’ve already decided to build a separate aquatic complex” was the answer (no other explanation was given).
The recently built Wellesley Community Centre (at the corner of Wellesley + Sherbourne) is a successful, popular place, partly because it includes a busy Toronto public library (TPL) branch.  Attendees at the Feb 2010 meeting suggested that a TPL branch also be incorporated into the Regent Park Community Centre - seems reasonable; the existing local TPL branch (at Parliament + Gerrard) is cramped, and would benefit from being relocated more centrally within Regent Park. Putting a library in a community centre seems ideal: offer visitors opportunities for intellectual, as well as physical, workouts. But our suggestion was casually discarded by planners: “the TPL wasn’t interested”, we were told. Instead, a large portion of the new building will be a 2 story employment centre.  (See above floor plan, or pages 26-29 of the revised plan.)

At the April 7 meeting, city staff was vague as to what employment services would be provided. Numerous local social agencies already offer employment services (Dixon Hall, Serve Canada, Salvation Army, Fred Victor, Council Fire, Toronto Youth Development and others), but the city claims their new centre “won’t duplicate existing services”. TCHC (which is wholly owned by the city) is constructing several condo buildings in the redeveloped Regent Park; the ground floor of one of these condos would seem to be a better location for an adult employment centre (instead of being part of the same “hub” building as an elementary public school), but the city is adamant that this is the “best place”. Councillor Pam McConnell listened to concerns from several parents on April 7, but we’re not hopeful of any changes.

Hopefully these improvements will be realized:

• Trefann residents know that Shuter St. gets a lot of heavy truck traffic. The north side of Shuter St. is zoned “no stopping”, and yet large delivery trucks and school buses stop in front of the school several times each day for loading/unloading passengers and cargo. As the Regent Park revelopment progresses, TDSB will be able to use quieter streets (Sackville, Sumach or St. David’s) to give the kids from “Park Public” School safer access to school buses.
• The unsightly dumpster should eventually disappear from the school’s front yard. “TDSB is intending to provide service loading space for the school from the north parking lot. Any TDSB dumpsters will be located in the north parking lot, close to the school. The community centre may either use these dumpsters or use totes that would be temporarily set out at the curb of Sackville street (community centres generate relatively little garbage).”

Expected construction start for the community centre is “summer 2011, expected opening: late 2012″.

The redevelopment of Regent Park was first announced in Oct 2004. Here is the original plan (5.5 mb). To summarize:

• demolish almost all existing housing; retain the existing community centre, health centre, ice rink, and 3 churches [237 Sackville, 509 Dundas East, 17 Regent]. The Christian Resource Centre at 40 Oak Street would be rebuilt (worship, community space, supportive housing)
• re-introduce a network of public streets, and public parks
• increase the density by 2.4 times (from 2,083 to a maximum of 5,100 units),
• encourage private developers to construct housing for a mixture of income levels on the Regent Park site, and
• construct an additional public housing site somewhere in East Downtown.

In 2004, we were told the project would be built in 6 phases, each one to take approximately 2 years, starting Dec 2005.  Hopefully there will be money for ongoing maintenance of these new buildings (since lack of maintenance was one of the main problems with the “original” Regent Park, and is the issue for almost all TCHC owned properties.)

Numerous changes since then:

• different sequencing of phases
• ever increasing building heights:  the carefully planned 2004 rezoning was revised in 2009; “block 21″ doubled (from 22 to 40m), “block 22″ doubled (15 to 30m), “block 23″ increased (from 15 to 22m), “block 38″ doubled (from 10 to 20m).
• instead of reusing the community centre, it is to be torn down and rebuilt elsewhere
• the new pool is to occupy part of the “big park” (instead of locating the pool beside Lord Dufferin School, as originally planned)
• new arts centre

At one time, there was a dedicated, comprehensive website - www.regentparkplan.ca, and frequent newsletters - to keep everyone informed; not the case any more.  This is the one link we’ve found that summarizes what information is officially available.

In 2004, our city leaders invested in a Toronto Indoor Pool Provision Strategy; the consultant’s final report offers 3 different options (scenarios); no indication on the city’s website which scenario was ultimately adopted. Also no indication whether the new Regent Park Aquatics Complex (or facilities planned for 2014 Pam Am Games) fit into this strategy (or is the strategy now “forgotten” ?)The city has been promising us a grand “Aquatics Complex” for several years; its original planned location was to be next to Lord Dufferin School.

When the city used “world-class aquatic centre” in its Dec 2009 announcement, most of us assumed that the Regent Park pool would be “olympic” size, i.e. 50m pool. The latest plans for Regent Park show a well designed, half-sized pool - only 25m in length - for swim training/lessons, and other aquatics areas for recreation (eg. waterslide), all wheelchair accessible. But does this warrant a separate building? Elsewhere in the city, pools are efficiently and economically incorporated into a multi-purpose community / recreation centre, so preplexing why not in Regent Park?

The latest plans say “expected construction start:  summer 2010; expected opening: late 2011″.
See above diagram: This pool has been under design for a few years at least, but in this March 2010 version, the placement of pool building entrance seems weird. It’s very “grand” to have an expansive sidewalk leading from Dundas St, and handy to walk from the park to the pool doors, but if the building entrance was instead located off Sumach (ie. in the middle of building):

• no need for long interior hallway to access change rooms
• putting the entrance on a quieter street means cars can more safely stop to let off passengers
• front doors would be closer to service entrance (most delivery persons will have to check in at main entrance first, before making deliveries at loading dock)

We sent this suggestion to the city recently; we’ll post their response as soon as it is received.

The city is planning to rip down the existing community centre (203 Sackville Green) and spend $20 million for a new facility at the corner of Sackville + Shuter. Here are the tentative plans from the March 10 meeting.

There are 2 more opportunities to give your input to the designers:
- Design Options Meeting: Saturday, March 13, 2010 at 1:00 PM at the South Regent Park Community Centre
- Schematic Design Presentation: Wednesday April 7, 2010 at 7:00 PM at the South Regent Park Community Centre.

The following letter was submitted to the City of Toronto.  At its June 23 meeting (which was postponed), the City (as planner) was considering approving yet another substantial increase in allowable heights for Regent Park redevelopment (where the City is the developer).  If approved, new Regent Park buildings along Shuter would tower over the adjacent houses in Trefann Court.

” It is very commendable that the City of Toronto, as sole owner of TCHC, is rebuilding the public housing in Regent Park; hopefully this area, located on the edges of Toronto’s downtown area, will evolve into more desirable and livable neighbourhood.  Intensification which provides transitions in height from existing adjacent low rise neighbourhoods, is good.

But it is troubling that no “planning” rationale is provided by the May 27, 2009 planning report, to justify a substantial increase in height limits.  Previous height limits for Regent Park were established, after extensive planning and review, only 4 years ago.  So what are the new “planning” issues, to justify this increased height?  The reasons given by the planner are exceedingly vague:  “lessons learned from Phase 1 and changing opportunities”.  One must assume that the only reason for “extra height” is “extra money” for the developer.  Taller buildings allows more market-priced condo units, to provide more money to rebuild the public housing.  Clearly, the City is in a conflict of interest in this application, as the city is acting as both the “planner” and the “developer”.

The planning report describes surrounding neighbourhoods; it is important to be aware of building heights in those neighbourhoods.  Cabbagetown, South of Carlton and Trefann Court neighbourhoods are almost entirely 2-3 storey houses, rarely exceeding 12m in height.  Newly constructed housing along Regent Park’s borders (eg. 547-567 Shuter, completed less than 2 years ago) are only 3 storeys, compatible with the city’s planning objectives stated in the former Trefann Court Part II Plan (1983):  “low rise, row house character”, and 12m height limit along Shuter St.

Of the streets bounding Regent Park (Shuter, Parliament, River, Gerrard), Shuter St. is the only one which is entirely residential, and so it is especially important here to provide “a transition between areas of different intensities and scale through the use of setbacks and step backs with adjacent lower intensity neighbourhoods” (as per Feb 2009 Regent Park Planning Rationale, page 13).  The 2003 zoning for Regent Park, which established a 15m height for blocks 23 and 10m for block 38 (vicinity of Shuter + Sackville), provided that appropriate and very important transition between Regent Park and its existing low-rise residential neighbourhood to the south.  Allowing 20m and 22m for these blocks would be  almost twice the height of existing 12m houses lining the south side of Shuter.

Please provide an appropriate transition in scale, between Regent Park and the adjacent low rise Trefann Court:  maintain a 15m height limit for blocks 23 and 38 of Regent Park. “

In rebuilding Regent Park, the city is planning a mix of subsidized housing (also known as RGI:  “rent geared to income”, or rental) and “market value (or “owned”) housing.  The city also talks about an “affordable ownership” option:  some sort of subsidy in the form of a 2nd mortgage, to enable more moderate income households to buy a “market value” condo.

In Regent Park Phase 1, which is currently under construction, the plan is for 350 rental and 600 “market value” - although to date, 5 years after the start of this project, no one has purchased any of the “market value” housing units.  In Phase 2, the plan is for 380 rental and 1270 “market value” units (on land currently occupied by 444 “old” Regent Park” rental units).  The existing community centre:  203 Sackville Green (still in good repair, perhaps 30 years old) will be demolished, and a new facility built approximately 1 block south.  This will be in addition to other Regent Park “community centres”:  the Aquatic Centre, and the “Day Care / Parents for Better Beginning”, both soon to be under construction elsewhere in the Regent Park site.

In the surrounding neighbourhoods of Cabbagetown and Trefann Court, Sumach and Sackville Streets are quiet, one way streets.  In Regent Park, both streets will become 2 way traffic.  The existing apartment tower, at 14 Blevins, will be retained due to its architectural significance.  Sackville Street is to be lined with 8 storey buildings, comparable in height to the 90 Sumach condos.

Compare the proposed heights of Regent Park buildings to Nelson Mandela Park Public School and 90 Sumach condos, which are also shown in these drawings
 

The block bounded by Shuter, Sutton and Regent St contains a mix of 2 storey private homes (372-376 Shuter, 29-31 Sutton) as well as 3 storey Regent Park townhouses (362-356 Shuter).  The city has acquired 376 Shuter and 21 Sutton; when asked at the May 11 meeting, the city wouldn’t divulge its plans for reveloping this block.

Where will the city get $450 million to pay for all of this?  Magic.

Regent Park TV is a new Internet broadcast website featuring videos produced by neighbourhood youth which is being launched on Wed, Nov 15 @ 7pm, at Cinecycle (129 Spadina Ave). Regent Park TV was also featured recently in issue 29:4 of the print magazine FUSE (alternative arts magazine).