King-Spadina West Precinct

This walk will explore the West Precinct of the King-Spadina Secondary Plan area with a focus on public realm, heritage, development trends and complete communities.

From the first wave of residential development in the 1840s, industrial intensification and residential decline in the 1860s to 1940s and the emergence of the Entertainment District along with cultural and creative industries beginning in the 1980s, the King-Spadina neighbourhood, located in the heart of Downtown Toronto, grew to be the transformative, vibrant, urban, mixed-use community found today.

A new planning framework, initiated in 1996, reintroduced residential uses alongside employment uses into the neighbourhood with the creation of a new Secondary Plan including a new, Regeneration Areas, land use designation. This proved to be quite successful and over the past three decades, the neighbourhood experienced unprecedented growth and development. These growth pressures necessitated further enhancements to the planning framework that now includes an updated Secondary Plan, a Heritage Conservation District (HCD) Plan and a Public Realm Strategy.

The updated Secondary Plan includes a robust vision statement and set of objectives focused on strengthening the Area’s important economic role and conserving its cultural heritage resources.

The King-Spadina Public Realm Strategy is a guideline document that establishes a vision that has helped and continues to help, the City, architects and developers work together and secure different forms of open spaces and connections, resulting in a much enhanced and well-connected public realm network which includes POPS, parks, mid-block connections and better streetscape. The intent was also to create a sense of place.

The unprecedented growth in the King-Spadina neighbourhood also helped draw attention to the importance of conserving the unique heritage fabric of the area that, in many ways, is what has made, and continues to make, this area so attractive for re-development in the first place. This includes a concentration of late 19th and early to mid-20th century Residential and Industrial/Commercial buildings, three historic public parks as well as a distinctive network of laneways. To protect this heritage fabric, the very recently adopted King Spadina HCD Plan establishes a tool to conserve the Area’s cultural heritage value through the conservation and management of its heritage attributes.

Together, the updated Secondary Plan, HCD Plan and Public Realm Strategy create a cohesive planning framework for the King-Spadina neighbourhood. The walk will showcase examples of how these strategies are being implemented.
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Register here
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/janes-walk-king-spadina-west-precinct-tickets-1988111623384?aff=oddtdtcreator