December 20, 2013
A Review of Waterfront Toronto’s Tri-Government Approach to Revitalization
This study evaluates successes and obstacles to intergovernmental cooperation from federal, provincial and local governments on Toronto’s waterfront over the past decade. In 2001, the three governments created Waterfront Toronto as a unique governance experiment to drive a $1.5B investments and a 20 year revitalization plan. This evaluation looks at how well that unique approach has served waterfront revitalization in Toronto.
Executive Summary
Over a decade has passed since Waterfront Toronto, a joint federal-provincial-municipal development corporation, was established to spearhead waterfront revitalization in Toronto. Then, as now, Waterfront Toronto marked a unique governance experiment, exceptional in both national and international perspective. This report evaluates the early results of this experiment, assessing the relative effectiveness of the tri-government approach as the corporation crosses the halfway mark of its 20-year mandate.
Overall, we find that Waterfront Toronto’s tri-government approach has proven moderately effective. Judged against its public commitments, the corporation has produced real, but modest, results amid significant constraints. It has won accolades for its planning and design work, and delivered several notable improvements to the public realm. But many of its projects remain well behind schedule–some abandoned altogether.
In its relations with government partners, the corporation has shown itself remarkably adept at managing and responding to immediate political crises. But the tri-government model has not been completely embraced by all participating departments and agencies. And while the corporation has earned considerable praise by a core group of stakeholders for its public engagement and community consultation efforts, the broader public remains skeptical.
Could the same results realistically have been achieved without the tri-government model? Almost certainly not. As hard as it is to imagine, at no time in the last 50 years has the waterfront witnessed as much coordinated redevelopment activity as during Waterfront Toronto’s tenure. Without it, the same pattern of utterly disjointed decision making that typified waterfront planning and implementation for the past half century would only have worsened.
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The report outlines a spectrum of institutional reforms as potential remedies, ranging from complete transformation, to major renovation, to minor enhancement of the existing model. Without further indication of each partner’s commitment to the tri-government approach, no specific alternative can be considered a comprehensive solution. Nevertheless, there are opportunities for immediate improvement. The report advances four recommendations that should be pursued by Waterfront Toronto and its partners regardless of overall institutional design:
1. Waterfront Toronto must refocus its work with an eye to medium-term objectives and time scales. Public promises become meaningless, even counterproductive, without clearly articulated, mid-range deliverables. Greater effort should be made to produce–and crucially, stick to–a list of realistic, five-year targets and timetables.
2. The corporation must mend relations with various arm’s-length agencies, such as the Toronto Port Lands Company, which have deteriorated over time. Executive-level meetings should be restarted or freshly organized with all agencies involved, to produce tangible agreements that confirm organizational roles and responsibilities, articulate shared principles, and address individual grievances–the aim not necessarily to build consensus, but trust.
3. Tri-government meetings must once again be formalized. Government partners should, through their respective waterfront secretariats, either reconvene the Intergovernmental Steering Committee, suspended since 2009, or establish a new forum for high-level intergovernmental dialogue. The ad hoc nature of current relations both undermines meaningful tri-government collaboration and obfuscates lines of accountability. As a matter of transparency, the public should also be made aware of when such meetings take place, and be provided reasonable access to relevant documentation.
4. Public waterfront lands must gradually be consolidated under the sole authority of Waterfront Toronto. The lesson from Toronto’s waterfront history, going back several decades, is that consolidated ownership is essential to effective planning and development. As a first step, a comprehensive study should be commissioned to examine the legal and financial risks involved in any prospective asset consolidation strategy.
Authors
Gabriel Eidelman
Release Date
December 20, 2013
ISBN
978-1-927350-52-2
Mowat Publication
No. 79