Will Ford’s Waterfront revamp endanger $1 B in tech projects?

By Nestor E. Arellano 

Monorails, malls and Ferris wheels are getting all the press these days as numerous Torontonians choke on their mayor’s call for a revamp of the Toronto Waterfront project. 

The for the Port Lands which encompasses three neighbourhoods (East Bayfront, West Don Lands and Lower Don Lands), south of the city along Lake Ontario’s shores, calls for a mixed-use neighbourhood, and naturalization of the mouth of the Don River, expansive green spaces and affordable housing. It is a vision geared towards the service and needs of the city’s residents. The plan is one that has been gone through lengthy consultation with residents and has hailed by numerous urban planners. 

On the other hand Mayor Rob Ford’s designs for the more than 174-hectares of lake front city lands focuses on attracting foreign investments for hotels, mega-malls, a monorail and a giant Ferris wheel. It’s a plan hatched by someone who prior to last year dismissed the waterfront development as a boondoggle. 

It’s a bad deal if you ask me. And if you run a tech-based company hoping to win a procurement contract with the lake front development, it could be bad news as well.

If the Ford proposal’s aim is to raise money from the sale of the Port Lands to fix holes in the mayor’s budget, it’s not going to be much of a cash grab. The sale of some of these lands may be a one-time source for funding things such as property tax freeze but it will not be enough to solve the city’s structural budget problems.

The new plan will also likely bring far less tax revenue and development charges than what the original Waterfront Toronto plan would bring.

While Ford has complained that Waterfront Toronto is moving at snail’s pace, his plan could further delay projects for the area. Nearly a billion dollars has already been spent on soil remediation, infrastructure, planning, design and environmental assessments for the site. Ford’s scheme is so divergent from the original plan that it could necessitate a revised environmental assessment. Such a development would only add millions of dollars to cost of developing the waterfront and further delay and work in the area.

This would be unfortunate for many Canadian businesses hoping to snag a procurement contract with the water front development.

Planners hope to build some 12,000 residential units and more than 228,600 square meters of commercial space in the waterfront. The Waterfront Toronto’s iWaterfront Advisory Council, last year, estimated that this will create no less than 8,500 jobs in the clean tech and digital media space.

Planners estimate that as much as $32 billion would be spent on the entire project. About $1 billion of that will be according to the . The organization has been working hard to generate interest in the waterfront project among local information and communication technology (ICT) companies and SMBs. 

According to CATA, one of the project’s primary objectives is to introduce sustainable practices and green technology. 

Last year, the organization was very upbeat about the program. Will recent developments now endanger or delay these procurement prospects for local tech companies?

Nestor Arellano is a Senior Writer at ITBusiness.ca. Follow him on , connect with him on , read his blogs on , email nestor at and join the .