Ice cream in the park? Why Toronto can't find the sweet spot on private businesses in public spaces
Shawn Micallef is a Toronto-based writer and a freelance contributing columnist for the Star. Follow him on Bluesky: @shawnmicallef.bsky.social.
In most Toronto parks, if you desire gelato, lemonade or a snack, you'll have to trek to the closest main street to find a place selling such things. That could be far away, especially on the waterfront or in suburban parks where nearby amenities are scarce. Quality commercial establishments in Toronto's public spaces are hard to come by.
At the same time, we give other public space away. Most egregious is Ontario Place for the Therme spa, but that's the provincial government's doing. The City of Toronto has been creating a lot of new public space through the POPS (privately owned publicly accessible spaces) program. Real estate in Toronto is prohibitively expensive for new parks, so the cash-strapped city negotiates quasi-public spaces in new developments, with more than 200 of them created.
Opinion articles are based on the author's interpretations and judgments of facts, data and events. More details
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