Let's fix it: This intersection is one of Toronto's most important places — but it's ugly

Toronto Star

31-05-2025

This is the first in a series of columns in the Star that will highlight important places in Toronto that could do with fixing up — and suggest ways they could be improved, from quick fixes to pie-in-the-sky ideas to make them great.
The lay of the land
Pretend to be a tourist in Toronto. What would you do?
I would head to legendary Yonge Street to see what all the fuss was about. Since Toronto is a city on a lake, I'd follow it to the water in anticipation of greatness.
Lisbons's Praça do Comércio, featuring the Cais das Colunas, is beautiful and feels important.
Dreamstime
Perhaps something like the Praça do Comércio in Lisbon, the civic square the whole city seems to flow towards. There, a small pier called the Cais das Colunas has steps down to the Tagus River where two pillars rise from the water. It's beautiful, grand and feels important, as if the city and all its history can be discovered from here.
Approaching Yonge and Queens Quay, you would never know the Island ferry docks and other great, new waterfront parks are steps away.
Steve Russell Toronto Star
In Toronto disappointment awaits. Yonge and Queens Quay is not a grand entrance to the city or a dramatic reveal of the harbour. Instead, it feels like two highways meeting where few would want to pass through outside of a motor vehicle. You would never know the Island ferry docks and other great, new waterfront parks are steps away — or that the city itself once had grand plans for such an ordinary-looking location.
The marker nods to the claim of Yonge Street being the longest in the world, but the grate over the water feels precarious and inelegant.
Steve Russell Toronto Star
Right at the water's edge, names of Ontario cities and towns are laid into the concrete along with their distance from Toronto, a cool nod to the controversial claim that Yonge Street is, or once was, the longest street in the world. However, the short metal grate balcony there allowing people to stand and walk over the water feels precarious and inelegant, unfitting of the location's importance to the city.
'Between the Eyes' by Richard Deacon, which resembles an egg beater, marks one corner.
Steve Russell Toronto Star
Across the street are buildings boastfully named 'Residence at the World Trade Centre' where a recently renovated semipublic square out front, the one with the eye-catching egg beater sculpture called 'Between the Eyes ' by artist Richard Deacon, marks the corner well. New planting beds are already shabby and worn out, though the pub among ground floor shops has a nice big patio by an outdoor waterfall, so there's potential, and more space, to expand commercial and public life here.
The place where Captain John's once floated is now home to water taxi slips, which seem temporary and inelegant.
Steve Russell Toronto Star
The other corners are more difficult. On the lake side, one of downtown Toronto's last remaining surface parking lots lingers as an anachronistic blight. Where Captain John's sometimes-sinking seafood ship restaurant once was are water taxi berths. They're a godsend that have helped make Toronto Island easier to get to as the city dithers on improving access, but the docks on either side of the Yonge slip feel temporary, also inelegant.
Kitty corner from each other are the former Toronto Star building and the Westin Harbour Castle hotel. Both are fortress-like, but it's important to remember these two buildings were pioneers, built on a dirty, post-industrial waterfront in the early 1970s, so their standoffishness to the public realm is understandable.
Both the Westin Harbour Castle, far left, and the old Toronto Star building, right, appear fortress-like.
Steve Russell Toronto Star
Much of Toronto's harbourfront has been a decades-long monumental effort to change from that earlier state to a welcoming people place. To continue that, improvements are needed in both the public and private realms at Yonge and Queens Quay.
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The quick fixes
Do basic maintenance and clean up the intersection. There is loose asphalt rubble in places, especially by the large bike-share station. The road markings are faded and need to be repainted. Doing so could give more space to the crowds of pedestrians and make the intersection seem less sprawling and hostile, especially if planters with trees and other elements are added to the dead space to add vegetation and even shade.
The serious changes
Implement plans languishing on the books. A decade ago the City of Toronto and Waterfront Toronto ran a high-profile design competition for the Toronto Island ferry docks. The winning design, by Toronto's KPMB and West 8 in Rotterdam, had an undulating wood structure and green roof, and was envisioned by the— architects to reimagine 'the site as a gateway, north to the city and south to the lake, as well as a destination in its own right.' Perfect. Do it.
The city's Central Waterfront Secondary Plan mentions that the 'foot of Yonge Street should be treated as a special place on the waterfront' and should be a 'distinctive gateway to the city' with public amenities for culture, tourism and that a 'dramatic new pier should be built at the foot of Toronto's historic main street.' That would improve the Yonge Street Slip where the taxis dock as well. Let's go!
The pie in the sky
Why not create Toronto's own Praça do Comércio? If cities around the world can have vast pedestrian areas, why can't Toronto? Add kiosks, trees and patios. One day the planned Waterfront East streetcar line should pass through here too, on its way to the Port Lands. It will be a hub.
To make Yonge-Queens Quay a welcoming people place, improvements are needed in both the public and private realms.
Steve Russell Toronto Star
Though private property, perhaps the owners of adjacent buildings would feel inspired to make their edges more human scaled, especially the Westin with its concrete maw hostile to people arriving or passing on foot.
This kind of treatment would be fitting for one of Toronto's most important places.