Moss Park Community Benefits Coalition  Meeting

By Dimitrije Martinovic
Dimitrije is a staff at FOCUS MEDIA ARTS CENTRE, funded by the Government of Canada's Local Journalism Initiative under the direction of CACTUS.

The Toronto downtown east side is experiencing massive changes, the Regent Park Revitalization is perhaps the most widely known, but there others as well. The George Street  Revitalization, which includes the old Seaton House (a men's shelter), and a number of other heritage buildings also located on George Street. In the northern end, stand the towers of Saint Jamestown, there too revitalization coming. And now the latest area to succumb to redevelopment is Moss Park.

The first leg to drop in this story was the recent announcement by Metrolinx that there will a new subway station in Moss Park. The subway station is part of a major series of infrastructure projects intended to install a new transit The Ontario Line, that links Ontario Place and the Ontario Science Centre. 15 Stops, 15.6 kilometers, 30 minuets from end to end.

With respect to Moss Park (the campus and green space), the subway station will be located at the North West corner of Queen St. East and Sherboure St. Directly north of the proposed subway station is the Moss Park Area (Circa 1970s), and the John Innes Community Centre (1951). At the western side, on Jarvis St. is the Moss Park Armoury, the sports field with the softball diamond in the middle, a tennis court, community garden, and children's splash pool located along the northern edge.

Plans to redevelop the area go back to 2015, but the project is deemed not feasible by 2016. In 2019 a new initiative is put forward that includes improvements to the park, the construction of a new recreation centre, and exterior upgrades toe the arena. However, the project to revitalize Moss Park has once more been stalled, this time by Metrolinx's construction of The Ontario Line which will pass through Moss Park.

As Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam (who attend the Moss Park Community Benefits Coalition  Meeting) explained, the Metrolinx project came as a huge surprise to the community's vision of redevelopment. In fact,  Metrolinx had intended to take over the entire park to use as a staging are for the construction of the subway tunnel and station. After some tense negotiations, Councillor Wong Tam and others managed to reduce the footprint of the staging area to only encompass half of the park. Unfortunately, the project is estimated to take approximately 7 years to complete, and it may 10 years.

A disruption of 7 to 10 years to an area that is already struggling could have far reaching consequences, and a desperate effort has ensued to however possible mitigate the damage to the park and the neighbourhood, and to find meaningful social changes to counter the impacts of a construction project that will fundamentally alter neighbourhood for possibly a decade.

  Some of the key issues that have arised from the coalition's community engagement to date includes:

1.     Impacts to Moss Park  which will limit park access for community members during construction
2.     Environmental  concerns  like the Moss Park station location, removal of trees at Moss Park and noise disturbances due to heavy construction activity.
3.     Community Benefits  Including minimum equity hiring targets so that good jobs, apprenticeships and professional careers are prioritized for local, low-income community members.
4.     Impacts to local businesses  due to years of construction activity and the importance of business supports programs (eg. loss revenue supports and social procurement).
5.     Neighbourhood improvements and social development plan  to invest in community wellbeing as the area undergoes significant changes from transit and development.

The purpose of the Moss Park Coalition  meeting  is to provide you with more details about all of the above, answer any questions you might have, hear your thoughts/feedback, and make sure that all residents and businesses in the Moss Park community have the information they need to be part of these important decisions.