It’s better to break ground than cross swords.

At least for a short time Wednesday, the province and the city of Toronto put aside their differences – aired sharply and publicly over the past few months – to announce the start of construction for a bus terminal and office complex near Union Station.

The $102-million GO bus station, aimed at plugging commuters directly into the transit hub of the GTA by 2020, would sit on the east side of Bay Street just north of Lake Shore Boulevard.

The terminal fits into a $2-billion public-private partnership project to build a pair of office towers standing 49 and 50 storeys, respectively, at what are now 81 and 141 Bay St. An elevated, one-acre park will straddle the downtown rail corridor to connect the two buildings – which was particularly interesting to Mayor John Tory.

“I’ll be looking at it as a bit of a test bed, but also as an example to people that we must not let hand-wringing get in the way of moving forward with ambitious projects that are going to build a great city,” Tory said, referring to his plans for “Rail Deck Park,” a prospective elevated green space down the rail line that remains, as it were, up in the air.

Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca nodded his appreciation to Tory for the city’s partnership, along with Metrolinx, in the project. “This official groundbreaking really is a testament to how important it is for partners to work together, to collaborate together,” he said.

Extending an olive branch, Tory alluded to recent grief around transportation and housing funding between city hall and Queen’s Park, giving it an upbeat spin.

“When you see me talking about the province and what they might do by way of further participation, it is because of my intense desire to do more with them because they’re such good partners – that’s what motivates all this business about them giving us more money; we want to do more with them,” Tory said. “It’s a very positive thing, really.”

Positivity wasn’t front of mind eight weeks ago, when the Mayor called out Premier Kathleen Wynne and her government for having “turned their backs” on Toronto with a budget that failed to match up to $5 billion in federal funding for new transit projects.

In January, Tory said he was “frustrated” at “being treated as a little boy going up to Queen’s Park in short pants,” and slammed the Premier for vetoing his proposal to put tolls on two city highways.

The mayor also sent out flyers recently that vented about lack of relief on a $1.73-billion housing repair backlog in the city. Thousands of units are at risk of being boarded up – including 1,000 units by the end of 2018 – displacing the families who live there, while 181,000 more people sit on the subsidized housing wait list.

Wynne responded forcefully last month, telling the legislature that “no government has put more money into transit in the city of Toronto than ours.” She pointed to the billions the province has poured into light-rail transit (LRT) lines on Finch and Sheppard avenues, the Eglinton Crosstown LRT, Scarborough subway extension, Union Station upgrades and plans for a $170-million annual gas tax revenue.

Tory avoided recriminations at the official groundbreaking on a sunny Tuesday morning, grinning and gripping a shovel alongside partners as an excavator and a mobile crane reared beneath glass-curtain skyscrapers behind them.

The city partnered with Montreal-based developer Ivanhoé Cambridge – a subsidiary of the second-biggest pension fund in Canada and which is backed on this deal by real estate investment giant Hines – on the new GO Bus terminal at 81 Bay St. The city has lent a hand through an incremental tax rebate, which will amount to 60 per cent of the site’s municipal property taxes over a 10-year period, according to a spokesperson for the city’s department of economic development and culture division.

Metrolinx is paying for the bus terminal by way of its sale of 141 Bay St. – where the second tower will sit – to Ivanhoé Cambridge. Metrolinx will pay out of pocket for the balance of the $102 million terminal that isn’t covered by that sale. The Crown corporation, which runs GO Transit, did not state by press time how much the property sold for.

With the second tower slated for completion in 2023, the fresh “urban campus” will become the new headquarters for CIBC. That space, dubbed CIBC Square and rimmed by Bay Street, Yonge Street, Front Street and Lake Shore Boulevard, will house 20,000 employees – three-quarters of them from CIBC – spread across 2.9 million square feet of office space.

Metrolinx said it is in talks with inter-city bus lines, but for now only GO buses will dock there at the terminal. It will connect Metrolinx’s 10,000 daily bus passengers en route to Union Station to GO Transit, the TTC, VIA Rail, and UP Express.

To contact the reporter on this story:
creynolds@qpbriefing.com
416-212-5789
Twitter: @ChrisAReynolds

Toronto mayor and province (briefly) kiss and make up over $2-billion GO Bus terminal and office complex

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