Extreme Home Makeover
The Regent Park redevelopment plan aims to bring new life to the area in the next 12 years
A notorious part of Toronto's downtown is getting a much-needed facelift in the coming years. The redevelopment of Regent Park is intended to be much more than a cosmetic change—aspiring to bring new access, business, community services and increased dignity to residents of the beleaguered area.
"Regent Park... is a community that is particularly
active and has been interested in revitalizing for some time. They had
a capacity to participate in a meaningful way in the process."
Derek Ballantyne
Bordered by Parliament, River, Shuter and Gerrard Streets, Regent Park is home to 7,500 people. It was initially conceived as a "garden city" in which low-income housing would be built in a park-like setting with streets removed from the regular city traffic. Ironically, this utopian concept turned out to be ideal for gangs and for drug dealers to conduct business sheltered from the public eye and law enforcement, and it presented real challenges to promoting a healthy and safe community.
Still, residents of Regent Park have a strong sense of community. "Sometimes people react when you say where you live. They say, 'Whoa, Regent Park… is it a good area?' because they have heard bad things," says Nadine Lewin, who has lived in the area for 17 of her 18 years. "If you've actually been there it's a pretty good area because you know everyone and nothing will ever happen to you. There is a strong sense of community. Basically, we stick together."
Over the years, many efforts to improve the conditions of Regent Park died on the planning table. In January 2002, the Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) took over management of the housing project and, supported by many residents, began a process of redevelopment that seems destined for completion.
The new plan is to reintroduce through streets to the area, tear down all 2087 units of low-income housing and rebuild the same number of new geared-to-income rental housing, as well as another 2,500 market rate units and condominiums, community services and spaces for new business. The result will be a mixed-income community akin to other neighbourhoods in the city.
"Redeveloping Regent Park was a priority because it's the oldest housing in the TCHC portfolio and it's in some of the worst condition because of that," says Derek Ballantyne, CEO of TCHC and a director on FSA Toronto's Board of Directors. "There was a desire to do something and our conclusion was that redevelopment was actually better than just repair. Regent Park was feasible because there is a community that is particularly active and has been interested in revitalizing for some time. They had a capacity to participate in a meaningful way in the process."
The process has been an involved one, including numerous community consultations, funding negotiations with all three levels of government and efforts to attract much-needed new business and services to the area. "We've had strong support in the community. They've been active participants in shaping the overall urban design—participating in reviewing the actual designs of units and buildings," says Ballantyne. "That level of engagement makes the approvals process much quicker and creates a better product."
TCHC used a number of approaches to reach out to the community. It held a series of community workshops so that anyone in the city who was interested in learning about the redevelopment could come and participate. "To encourage people [from the Regent Park community] into the workshops and make sure they understood what was going on, we also worked with animators who lived in the community," Ballantyne explains. "The animators were selected in part because of their attachment to particular ethno-cultural groups living in Regent Park and they acted in many ways as intermediaries encouraging people to participate in the process."
In all, Ballantyne estimates that TCHC met face to face with 2000 people in the planning process. "Then we worked with focus groups and other working groups drawn from Regent Park as well as other east downtown neighbourhoods when there was a particular issue to be addressed, like the review of a building design or how to encourage more environmental sustainability."
Although the goal is admirable and the process has been consultative, the redevelopment has not been without its share of setbacks. Securing a development partner was one of them. In September 2005, TCHC named Cresford Developments Corporation as the developer partner for phase one of the project. Cresford subsequently backed out after determining that it was unable to meet its objectives under the agreement. A new developer, The Daniels Corporation, was named in March of 2006.
And despite workshops and efforts to engage residents, many still have concerns about the project. "Yeah, [the residents] will welcome the change, but it's a matter of how much will it cost and will there be any twists behind it," says Lewin. "People are just worried about whether they will be able to move back into Regent Park because now they are planning big condos and new roads."
TCHC assures tenants that they have the first right of return to Regent Park once it is rebuilt. Redevelopment is scheduled to take place in 12 phases over as many years. Phase one has already begun and 1160 people in 370 households bordered by Dundas, Parliament, Oak and Sackville Streets were relocated. This phase will include about 800 units of new houses: 300 geared-to-income units and market condos and rentals, according to Ballantyne. Of the residents who have been displaced, nearly 80 per cent stayed in or around Regent Park in TCHC communities, 12 per cent moved to TCHC communities in other parts of the city and three per cent moved out of TCHC.
The redevelopment is almost universally seen as an opportunity to have a positive life-changing impact on the low-income residents in the area and there have been calls for the TCHC to do more than just build new housing for the poor. "An integral part of the first phase, and one of the reasons why we ended up picking that phase was we wanted to build right at the outset some commercial activity back in the neighbourhood," says Ballantyne. "Part of the plan is for the building of a 30,000 square foot grocery store and we've reached an agreement with a bank to locate there." Critics say that geared-to-income housing has proven more permanent than it was designed to be, with most people born into low income households staying there. Ballantyne answers, "we are also working on a set of low-income ownership options. The challenge is how do you get a market unit down to a price that is affordable? It's a huge financial challenge trying to make some of the ownership units available for current residents of Regent Park."
If the redevelopment plan is successful, in 10 years' time Regent Park will be a thriving neighbourhood, melding the best elements of the old, including a strong sense of community, with state-of-the-art buildings and community services. "You can already see a lot of redevelopment happening in the area [around Regent Park]," says Ballantyne. "All of that is positive and improves the neighbourhood. But we have to make sure the neighbourhood remains mixed income and accessible to low income people—that it doesn't gentrify in a way that excludes low income people from participating."
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