{"id":20627,"date":"2011-06-13T10:43:12","date_gmt":"2011-06-13T14:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=20627"},"modified":"2013-01-21T15:14:09","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T20:14:09","slug":"lorinc-the-potential-locked-up-in-pecaut-square","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2011\/06\/13\/lorinc-the-potential-locked-up-in-pecaut-square\/","title":{"rendered":"LORINC: The potential locked up in Pecaut Square"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Earlier this year, Mayor Rob Ford re-dedicated the interstitial space next to Metro Hall as David Pecaut Square \u2014 a classy tribute to a classy guy, whose contribution to the city is both keenly felt and missed during this week\u2019s Luminato Festival. Appropriately enough, Luminato\u2019s organizers quickly colonized Pecaut Square as its main stage, giving the event a much needed pied de terre<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Pecaut was an American expat consultant who founded the Toronto City Summit Alliance and died in late 2009 after a two-year fight with colon cancer (see the Eye Weekly<\/em> obituary \u2014 “Torontopia’s Suit” \u2014 written by Spacing<\/em>‘s Shawn Micallef here<\/a>). Pecaut Square (which sits on real estate that used to be a marshalling yard) physically abuts much of what he valued in this city: the public sector (Metro Hall), the arts (the Mirvish theatres, Roy Thomson Hall, the CBC); Toronto\u2019s financial services heft (the sleek RBC Dexia tower), and the role tourism can plays in urban development (the impressive Ritz-Carlton Hotel next door). Luminato, like Nuit Blanche, also provides a vivid illustration of the productive interplay between the arts, corporate philanthropy, and public space \u2014 something Pecaut certainly understood.<\/p>\n

Even without the festival, the new development along Wellington has rapidly transformed that square, creating the all-important sense of enclosure that marks great urban spaces like New York\u2019s Union Square. As the Montreal International Jazz Festival did for the area around the Place des Arts, Luminato should inspire the city to reimagine the design of that space and the way it relates to its surroundings.<\/p>\n

The Square\u2019s muddy layout came up last week when the members of 2010 Toronto Urban Design Awards jury (I\u2019m a member this year) visited a couple of nominated projects in the immediate vicinity.<\/p>\n

The space features four stairwells protruding gracelessly from the food court below, a perplexing fountain, a bit of grass and a jumble of landscaping that serves as a kind of visual blockade along the south side, off Wellington. Worst of all is a garage exit, the maw of which now stares directly at the lobby of a four-star hotel.<\/p>\n

Consequently, the sightlines and elevations between King and Wellington are a mess. The cockeyed configuration of Wellington, a street now lined with offices, condos, and boutique hotels, remains a mystery to all but the worker bees in the transportation department. And the open space around Roy Thomson Hall is totally wasted thanks to a pointless sunken parking lot on the south side and an equally purposeless sunken reflecting pond\/terrace on the north.<\/p>\n

With the RBC Dexia and Trump towers now finished, the precinct around Pecaut Square is almost completely built out. In the foreseeable future, a highrise condo is set to sprout next to the Royal Alex, and something large will land on the parking lot on the east side of Simcoe, just south of Wellington. Then, it\u2019s done.<\/p>\n

In other words, now that the private development has transformed Pecaut Square into an outdoor room, the City must begin thinking about a transformative redesign of the space itself. The potential is enormous, because these opportunities don\u2019t come along very often in dense urban cores where real estate is at a premium.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the only such park downtown to face this kind of pivot point. The forlorn square behind College Park \u2014 tucked into the middle of the block bounded by Bay, College, Yonge, and Gerrard \u2014 is surely another candidate for a public realm makeover. Once Aura, the immense tower at the corner of Yonge and Gerrard, is complete, that surprisingly spacious parkette (it sits atop a parking garage) will be surrounded on all four sides by looming residential and commercial buildings. As such, it becomes the natural focal point for a 24\/7 highrise neighbourhood. Right now, however, that open space is a sorry clutter of ill-fitting elements, fractured sightlines, confusing terraces, and parks department neglect.<\/p>\n

In both cases, the City should focus on reimagining these spaces with an eye to transforming them into highly urban squares that serve the people who have poured into the core of Toronto. But such a process requires imagination, public engagement, and leadership (i.e., resources) on the part of the municipality.<\/p>\n

Strangely, Ford has a chance to position himself at the start of this process with the re-naming of Pecaut Square. In case he is wondering about the return on investment associated with such urban design projects, I\u2019d point out that Montreal\u2019s jazz festival precinct \u2014 which the municipality has continued to improve and expand \u2014 has attracted millions of visitors and hundreds of millions of dollars to that city.<\/p>\n

Sounds like respect for taxpayers to me.<\/p>\n

Photo by Sookie<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year, Mayor Rob Ford re-dedicated the interstitial space next to Metro Hall as David Pecaut Square \u2014 a classy tribute to a classy guy, whose contribution to the city is both keenly felt and missed during this week\u2019s Luminato Festival. Appropriately enough, Luminato\u2019s organizers quickly colonized Pecaut Square as its main stage, givingContinue reading “LORINC: The potential locked up in Pecaut Square”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4051,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,2,20],"tags":[307,4190,17726,14068,17728,423,17727,10141,370,67,426,2510,38,469,17724,17384,14066,672,17725,227,2123,310,78,11517,17729,19,4648,4295,6872],"class_list":["post-20627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-politics","category-urban-design","tag-cbc","tag-college-park","tag-david-pecaut-square","tag-dexia","tag-expat-consultant","tag-eye-weekly","tag-financial-services","tag-food-court","tag-king","tag-luminato","tag-mayor","tag-metro-hall","tag-montreal","tag-new-york","tag-new-yorks-union-square","tag-pecaut-square","tag-rbc-dexia-tower","tag-real-estate","tag-ritz-carlton-hotel","tag-rob-ford","tag-roy-thomson-hall","tag-shawn-micallef","tag-squares","tag-the-eye-weekly","tag-the-montreal-international-jazz-festival","tag-toronto","tag-toronto-city-summit-alliance","tag-transportation-department","tag-wellington"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLORINC: The potential locked up in Pecaut Square - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2011\/06\/13\/lorinc-the-potential-locked-up-in-pecaut-square\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LORINC: The potential locked up in Pecaut Square - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Earlier this year, Mayor Rob Ford re-dedicated the interstitial space next to Metro Hall as David Pecaut Square \u2014 a classy tribute to a classy guy, whose contribution to the city is both keenly felt and missed during this week\u2019s Luminato Festival. 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