The Fort York area was once home to warehouses and factories, but now homeowners
want in on the action

A NEIGHBOURHOOD SOLDIERS ON

Toronto is a city of ever-evolving communities. This article is part of an
occasional series in which developers explain why they decided to build in
specific areas of Toronto and their sense of the neighbourhoods they are
helping to create.

By Lisa Van De Ven

In 1813 it was the site of the battle of York, at which American soldiers took
on British troops at the threshhold of Fort York. Today it's the site of
another invasion: Home buyers are storming the gates for a condo in one of
Toronto's oldest and most convenient areas.

For years, the Fort York neighbourhood - spanning the western harbourfront
between Strachan Avenue and Bathurst Street - has been home to factories and
warehouses because of it's proximity to Lake Ontario and the ships bearing
goods. But many of those buildings were abandoned and found themselves, like
the old fort itself, with little purpose at all.

In came the developers. And today, the neighbourhood is thriving, with an
Excellence in Planning prize from the Ontario Professional Planners Institute
to it's credit.

Nestor Repetski, senior partner at Winick Realty Corp., which is representing
Plazacorp/Berkeley's West Harbour City site, and Ronny Hirsch, president of
Malibu Investments, recently gave me separate tours of the neighbourhood.
Here's what I saw.

Nestor Repetski,
West Harbour City
"This is one of those rare instances where everything except the actual
buildings is already here," says Mr. Repetski at the start of the tour.

Roads and parks will be added when the new buildings go up, but meanwhile the
area has plenty to offer. There's the 13-hectare Coronation Park, for
instance, at the edge of Lake Ontario. It's a memorial to Canadian war
veterans, lush with maple trees planted almost 70 years ago. With it's lake
views and the Martin Goodman Trail, it's also a popular destination for
cyclists, rollerbladers, picnickers and families out for a stroll. "There's
just so much going on here," says Mr. Repetski. "Very mellow, people
activities."

Across from the park is an old factory building that once housed Molson's
brewery. This giant wall of brick, between Fort York and Lake Shore Boulevard,
will be torn down to make way for the two phases of West Harbour City.

Next to the Molson's building, Mr. Repetski points out the site of a new piece
of parkland, to be named after Toronto writer and activist June Callwood. It
will separate West Harbour City from the neighbouring WaterParkCity
develoupment, and provide a link to the 15 hectares of Fort York itself, much
of it public parkland. That link, says Mr. Repetski, will help revitalize and
oft-forgotten city site. "All of a sudden that little abandoned piece of
Toronto history is going to have a context again," he says. "For the first
time in probably 100 years, 200 years, that fort once again will be an
important place."

New streets will also help the neigbourhood settle in to it's surroundings.
Fort York boulevard will hook up with Bremner Boulevard on the other side of
Bathurst, uniting this new neighbourhood with the CityPlace master-planned
community to the east. North-south streets will provide passage to the new
developments, taking some of the strain off Lake Shore Boulevard.

Mr. Repetski finishes his tour at Fort York itself. For now, he says, "It's one
of Toronto's best kept secrets."

Rony Hirsch,
Malibu at Harbourfront
"We had some vision that this area was going to be one of the most desirable
areas [in the city]," Rony Hirsch says of the Fort York neighbourhood, where's
he's developing the Malibu at Harbourfront condo on Fleet Street west of Bathurst.

He says he could see the neighbourhood's potential from the start, and worked
with the other developers in the area to create something unique.

"It became a very, very urban neighbourhood, but also you have trees and the
lake, Fort York as well."

Mr. Hirsch begins his tour at the Malibu sales office, the former site of a
Molson-owned beer store that was part of the old brewery lands that includes
the site of Mr. Repetski's West Harbour City.

He points out the first signs of condominium development in the community.
Across the street from Malibu is Context Development's Tip Top Lofts - formerly
the Tip Top Tailers warehouse - in the move-in stages across the street, and
WaterParkCity under construction at Fleet Street and Fort York Boulevard.

Farther on, Mr. Hirsch stops behind the Malibu site, looking at one of the last
industrial properties in the area: the St. Mary's cement plant, where trucks
still travel in and out from the Bathurst Street entrance, shadowed by the
Gardiner Expressway. The plant will be gone within the year, to be replaced by
residential development.

The derelict warehouse building at the northeast corner of Bathurst and Lake
Shore, long abandoned, will become a new Loblaws superstore. Much as the
decrepit old building defined the poorly kept area of the past, the new store
will help define the nascent residential neighbourhood, Mr. Hirsch says.

The Gardiner, meanwhile, will be more integrated into the area, amid the taller
buildings planned around it. "The Gardiner will work with all the buildings
and the landscape," he says.

Buyers still need some imagination to envisage what the neighbourhood will be
like when it's established - but that's changing, a fact not lost on home
hunters: "When we started two years ago, it was really almost nothing," says
Mr. Hirsch. "I think in three years, you will really see a neighbourhood ...
you will see buildings, and flowers, and trees." And, of course, Fort York.