More Parks that Integrate Transit Please!
Toronto's new CIBC Square Park is a great example of incorporating the things that make the city work into a park.
I have been really excited for the “The Park at CIBC SQUARE” in Toronto ever since it was announced. This piece is going to hinge on this project, so let me start by giving you some background on it, it’s quite interesting!
The first thing to discuss is what CIBC Square is. CIBC Square is a major new office development directly east & adjacent to Toronto Union Station. The project consists of two large towers, each over 200 meters tall, on the north and south sides of the union station rail corridor (USRC). As it turns out, the north tower is actually situated on the site of the old Union Station bus terminal, which was an okay facility, but was simply a surface bus loop with a small indoor waiting room: not the greatest welcome to the city!
In order to create the north tower of the project on the site of the former Union Station bus terminal, the south tower incorporates a 2-level indoor bus terminal, which is a big upgrade from the former one. Passengers now do not have to step outside to go from bus to office, bus to subway, or bus to regional or national train! The terminal is also spacious and airy and completely climate controlled, with automatic sliding doors at the various bus bays (which can accommodate GO transit’s double decker buses, if you were wondering).
I’d argue access to the terminal is also better: the former bus terminal required walking across open air platform three to reach it, while the new one has a dedicated pedestrian bridge from the interface area between Union Station and Scotiabank Arena (where the Toronto Maple Leafs and Raptors play). Unlike the previous connection, this actually features escalators!
Even better, the new Union Station bus terminal was designed with sufficient capacity to take over the old intercity bus terminal at Dundas & Bay Streets, which was quite run down, not well integrated with other transit, and just not wonderfully laid out. Most intercity buses now call at the new indoor terminal, aside from some slightly bothersome holdouts like Flixbus.
Now, today’s post is not really about the bus terminal, but what is it about a park? Well, in addition to connecting the two towers at CIBC Square with a renovated teamway (the walkway under the train platforms adjacent to Bay Street), the project also connects them via a new park which is elevated above the USRC. This park is publicly accessible, but privately owned (known as a POPS in Toronto planning nomenclature), and should mean some great access to skyline and railway views. The park finally partially opened last week, and I went out to see it firsthand! (I will probably make a video about it at some point)
The Park is actually quite easy to access: There is an external staircase as well as a set of escalators up from the pedestrian bridge, which takes you to the Union Station Bus Terminal — they are pretty hard to miss.
There are a few things I really like about the park.
The first is that it naturally incorporates the transit infrastructure. There is no other good publicly accessible viewpoint where you can look down to see the eastern USRC and the skyscrapers popping up all around it (the USRC runs on an embankment here), and the large glass walls really open up the space, showing you the trains and the switches that allow them to reach their desired platforms. It will also be awesome in the future to watch projects like electrification and platform and track reorganization taking place from here.
Now, the views from the park aren’t all that’s here of course. The park isn’t currently that big (probably about the size of your average pocket park in downtown Toronto), but it will grow quite a bit when the second phase of the project is complete (the structural deck over the tracks is complete but is currently being used for construction staging). I’d imagine when fully open, the park will roughly triple in size. It’s also much more interesting than most parks in Toronto because of the great views, which will continually change as more towers go up around the USRC and potentially new parks are added as well.
The park itself is really nice, in part because it’s built on a deck so the entire ground space is covered by something thoughtful, whereas in many Toronto parks it’s just a mix of patchy grass and asphalt pathways. At CIBC Square Park you actually have a really nice boardwalk material with sculpted wooden benches that have really cool illumination at night time. Having nice benches and thoughtful ground covering is one of those things that you really come to appreciate over time and when you spend time in places around the world. In North America and in Toronto, it’s really common to see cheap concrete or asphalt for every hard surface (even concrete in block form feels special) and so a space that doesn’t resort to that is instantly notable — even if it shouldn’t be.
The fact that this park will exist as a publicly accessible, hopefully mostly unchanging space elevated in the city center is by itself quite interesting, and being able to see the CN tower behind a couple of young trees with a nice breeze blowing by is really pleasant.
What’s really cool is I believe the area to the south and potentially north side of the park in the towers will be a food hall type space, which can flow out directly into the park. I can already imagine getting some food and sitting down in the park to eat it, and I do imagine CIBC will carefully manage this park to keep it clean in a way that a regular park may unfortunately not get treated.
I actually think that the park is so directly integrated into the office, and thus the PATH system, is really nice. Not only will this mean office workers will be able to come down and sit in the park to chat, or to take a break, but I can already imagine coming up here to wait for a train rather than sitting underground in the concourses of Union Station. That said, the lack of direct connectivity to the platforms at Union means this space can’t really replace the concourses, and you’ll still have to head down to your train 10 to 15 minutes before it leaves. Getting back to being connected to the PATH, I think this is a very underrated feature that’s unfortunately uncommon in Toronto. This is a city with very erratic weather, and having more open spaces easily accessible from transit or the PATH without having to do a long walk would be nice, especially if you want to get outside in winter or during days when a torrential downpour could strike at any time. Obviously, a park like this can’t replace a large park with sports pitches and the like, but as a park where you’re mostly meant to sit and chat with friends or relax the location is really quite good — in fact there’s even a lawn where you could casually sit and hang around.
Now, I’ve been pretty positive about this park and I do think it’s really good, but there are some things I think could make it better. For one, the park is a little under-protected from weather: it’s certainly really nice during good weather, but having some structures to protect from rain during our frequent summer storms would be nice (this will quite possibly be coming when the park is fully complete, but could probably be integrated throughout a bit more). The next is that the park has hours, since city parks often say they are open sunset to sunrise the 10PM closing time feels reasonable, but especially on a Friday night in the summer, and with restaurants and the like nearby that just feels excessively early — 12AM would be preferable. The final thing that I’d really like to see (maybe still possible in the future), is some kind of apertures in the glass fencing around the space. The glass will inevitably get dirty which will make views and photos worse, and it has speckling to protect from bird strikes which makes taking photos through it even more annoying; some small but well-placed openings would be a nice touch as I imagine many people will want to take photos here!
Anyways, that’s my review (sort of) of phase 1 of this new park, I will definitely write something else down the line when it expands and I might cover more transit accessible and adjacent parks (like the expansion of the West Toronto Railpath which I covered in a video here). Thanks for reading!