With the final public consultation meeting scheduled for the Sidewalk Labs smart-city project less than two weeks away, government agency Waterfront Toronto is indicating that it wants to go ahead with the project, and that it’s ready to put hundreds of millions of dollars behind some of the key proposals.
On Tuesday, the agency released a so-called “discussion guide” aimed at distilling the thousands of pages of documents generated by the complex and controversial project down to an easier-to-digest subset of proposed “solutions.”
Of the 160 proposals it identifies, it said it supported 144 and that it was willing to fund 11 directly — including modular heated pavement and pneumatic tubes for carrying garbage out of buildings.
Moreover, the agency indicated that it will lobby for government funding and regulatory changes to enable other innovative proposals put forward by Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.
That doesn’t mean all 144 solutions will be built, Waterfront Toronto officials said, since negotiations with Sidewalk Labs need to translate the broad proposal into a firm plan. But Tuesday’s report was the clearest signal yet that after a year of tense negotiation in 2019, Waterfront Toronto is now generally supportive of moving ahead with the project.
Waterfront Toronto chief executive George Zegarac said at the final scheduled consultation session, he’d like public feedback on which ideas from Sidewalk Labs should be the highest priority.
“I think everybody is excited about the opportunities, but it has to be a good deal for the public,” he said.
“Part of the constraint is going to be financial — who’s putting in what money — and what we’d like to hear is what are the things people are interested in building on?”
Zegarac said he expects to put most of the $590 million generated by selling the land for the proposed development back into affordable housing and other services for the new neighbourhood.
“Certainly the discussions are around using most of that money. Whether we use all of that, you know, that’s part of our negotiation,” he said Tuesday morning.
It has been nearly three years since Waterfront Toronto first issued a request for proposals to come up with an innovative plan to develop Quayside, a 12-acre plot of land on the city’s lakeshore. Sidewalk Labs, a sister company to Google Inc., was selected to come up with a master plan.
Last June, Sidewalk Labs delivered a sprawling 1,500 page Master Innovation and Development Plan (MIDP) which proposed expanding the project to develop 190 acres of land, significantly subsidized by Waterfront Toronto.
Waterfront Toronto board chairman Stephen Diamond immediately signalled that major parts of the Sidewalk Labs MIDP were non-starters, and over the summer and fall of 2019, the two sides negotiated to resolve the sticking points.
After those issues were resolved, Waterfront Toronto staff set about evaluating what was left of the MIDP.
Now, Waterfront Toronto has scheduled two public meetings on Feb. 29 giving residents one final chance to weigh in, before the board votes on whether to green-light the project in May. Officials were careful to say that further consultation meetings might be scheduled, and the City of Toronto has indicated that it plans on doing its own independent consultation and evaluation process.
But Waterfront Toronto staff are already recommending that the agency proceed with detailed negotiations with Sidewalk Labs to flesh out the details of a firm innovation plan.
On May 20, the Waterfront Toronto board will vote on whether to proceed with a rough sketch of the project, based on the evaluation and negotiation done to date; then by the end of the year, the board will vote on a final negotiated deal for the development.
Andrew MacLeod, the chief executive of Postmedia Network Inc., which owns the Financial Post, is a member of the board of directors of Waterfront Toronto.
At this stage, even the items that Waterfront Toronto doesn’t support aren’t completely off the table.
For example, the idea for flexible “building raincoats” to create awnings during inclement weather was rejected, but staff at Waterfront Toronto said that Sidewalk Labs could tweak the proposal later to bring it back.
In an emailed statement, Sidewalk Labs spokeswoman Keerthana Rang said it’s natural that not all of the company’s proposals will be enacted
“That said, we are still in active negotiations with Waterfront Toronto and are still reviewing what will be possible at Quayside,” Rang said.
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