Toronto’s Waterfront: Vic Gupta & Chris Glaisek on Housing, Jobs, and Marine Transportation

In this episode, we explore how Toronto’s 10-kilometre waterfront can transform the city from being a city on a lake to a true Waterfront City. Achieving this vision means striking the right balance between housing, employment lands, culture, and industry.

The conversation, hosted by our President & CEO Giles Gherson, touches on:

• How flood protection is unlocking new neighbourhoods
• Why transit investments like East Harbour and marine mobility are game changers
• How mixed-use planning, cultural destinations and film studios can create year-round activity and well-paid jobs.

We also examine how city-owned lands and port operations can coexist with public spaces, and why connecting destinations from west to east is essential for long-term success.

This episode features Vic Gupta, CEO of CreateTO, and Chris Glaisek, Chief Planning & Design Officer at Waterfront Toronto.

Transcript

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From the Toronto Region Board of Trade, this is Toronto Talks. Toronto, let's talk about our waterfront. 10 kilometres of shoreline that will define how our city grows for the next century. You know, the one thing that we, I think, need to do is try to create connectivity between all of these different aspects of the 10 kilometre waterfront. I think the vision has always been to make this a really special waterfront. And we have been looking at some of those other cities from around the world and said, you know, this could be one of the greatest waterfronts. Toronto's waterfront is one of the largest urban redevelopment opportunities in all of North America. Housing, jobs, culture, industry, all of it has a place here if we get the balance right. Two people at the heart of that work are Vik Gupta, CEO of CreateTO, and Chris Glacic, Chief Planning and Design Officer at Waterfront Toronto. Together, Chris and Vic's organizations are working to transform Toronto from being a city on a lake to a waterfront city. Recently, they both sat down with our president and CEO, Giles Gerson. Here's that conversation. Great to have you here for another episode of Toronto Talks. And what, um, what we'd love to sort of get a sense of, I think is your visions of, uh, you know, the waterfront. We're here to talk about what the waterfront is, what it can be, where it's going. It's it, we call it the last frontier for Toronto, because you think about a city of this size and scale and scope, and we've got this phenomenal opportunity that any other city in the world would have of a relatively underdeveloped prime piece of real estate. That's 10 kilometers long. I think it'd be helpful to get a sense, Vic, of how you came to this job and a little bit of what CreateTO does. Because as I was saying earlier to you, when you hear CreateTO, you think entertainment rather than what you really do. You're involved with the port and so on. Yeah, sure. Well, thank you. First of all, it's a real treat to have this conversation and talk to some of your members and listeners. So my background has, I've been, I've worked in and out of government for many years, supporting and working with the private sector to, you know, help government understand their business and then working inside the government. And in 2017, under the leadership of Mayor Tory, the city had decided that, you know, real estate needed to be consolidated and that we needed a strategic real estate advisor. Prior to that, real estate was really just the dirt that something sat on. Very disjointed, right? Very disjointed. distributed decision-making, et cetera. So that started the creation of Crate.io. My background, in addition to government, has been as an entrepreneur. I've had a couple of different businesses. And so it was an opportunity to join Crate.io. I feel a passion for public service, opportunity to make the city better. And a matter of time, I had the opportunity to become the CEO. Crate.io, really the mandate is to optimize the use of city-owned real estate. So we, on behalf of the city, we don't own much of the real estate directly, but we advise the city on how to create co-location opportunities, how to maximize the value, how to build more affordable housing as sort of priority number one. And then we support the city's divisions as they need more real estate solutions. So how do we co-locate recreation centers with libraries? And I think lastly, and sort of really pertinent to this conversation is on behalf of the city, we own, entitled the 400 acres of the land that is in the portlands. And that brings, you know, Chris and I and his organization and my organization very closely linked as partners in trying to develop the portlands and the waterfront. Terrific. And trying the right mix as well, because, you know, one thing we want to talk about at some point in the conversation is the port itself, where you have a role. Absolutely. You know, and what wither the port, you know, it's a, it's a huge economic asset. I think there's a sense it could do more. But we'll come back to that because it'll play a role, I think, in the, in the general scheme of things. Chris. Yeah. Thanks for having, thanks for having me, Giles. And great to be here with you, Vic. A little bit about myself. I, I'm actually trained as an architect, but I've worked as a planner for, for most of my career. Before I came to Toronto, I was actually a part of the core planning team that was planning the, uh, rebuild of the world trade center site. I was hired on to do that right after, uh, uh, 9/11 happened. Um, and, um, worked on the design competition that led to the ultimate selection of the Daniel Liebeson scheme as the master plan. Um, and, um, that was a very interesting, very fraught, very high profile, um, endeavor with lots of stakeholders. and lots of interests. Perfect segue to Toronto and the waterfront. That's exactly what I was going to say because I did that for three years and I was one of the last holdouts from the original crew that was hired. It was a very, very tough, as you could imagine, environment to work in. And I reached the point where I too was ready to leave and my wife is from Canada and she said,"Why don't you look for a job in Toronto?" So I started looking and very shortly after I began, I heard about the role at Waterfront Toronto and I met with the leadership fair and I thought,"Wow, this is actually exactly like what I've been doing on the World Trade Center site. It's an organization with a broad mandate because Lower Manhattan Development Corporation was overseeing not just the Trade Center, but the revitalization of downtown and had money, but no land ownership." And so Waterfront Toronto is largely the same. Government funding, we don't own the land. As Vic said, they are one of the primary landowners. There are others as well. And having to work with those stakeholders to come up with a plan that people can get behind and get excited about. Waterfront Toronto was created to bring the three levels of government together. The challenges down here are big and really require that level of collaboration, the flood protection of the Don River, a very expensive project. And it really took all three levels contributing because the project does have city, provincial, and national significance in many ways. It is essentially flood protected now. I'm happy to say we opened Bedasagay Park two weeks ago. Very successful opening, lots of people using it, and that flood protection unlocks all of that land that Vic was talking about so that it can now be put to a much better, more productive use for the city to address some of our pressing problems. And that's what Waterfront Toronto is trying to do. It's interesting when you think back over when you came here, I remember when I was involved, there was all about Quayside, the notion of a kind of technology hub on the east side. Tell me a bit of how it shifted away from, you know, what was really the focal point, which was a kind of technology hub. Well, you know, I think the technology hub was certainly an interesting, compelling idea. There had been discussions about some sort of convergence center in the portlands from when I first arrived here in 2005, so already 10 years before. So there was a history of wanting that. Waterfront Toronto installed one of the first ultra-broadband lines in the city that serves multiple buildings down here. And so I think it kind of made some sense. I don't think anyone anticipated the sort of backlash around privacy that the Quayside, sorry, the Sidewalk Labs proposal involved. But I think we got a lot out of that in the sense that I think it helped us push the envelope and raise the bar for that site. And I think the team that we now have, which is Keysight Impact Limited Partners, which is Dream and Great Golf, they're delivering on a lot of the other components of that. So it's a very ambitious program for housing, very ambitious program for affordable housing. I think they brought on some remarkable architects to do some wonderful design, to create some great spaces and hopefully create some of the animation uses. So block five in the Quayside site was something we decided to try to hold aside for an anchor kind of destination use, cultural venue of some sort. And I'm pretty optimistic that we're going to figure that out. We've got a slowdown in the market, so it may not happen as quickly as we were hoping. But I still think the pieces are the right pieces to deliver something great on that site. And we will have innovation. It may not look exactly like the Sidewalk Labs version of innovation, but there will be innovation, there will be sustainability. Can I add a thought to that, Giles? I think what the learning, for me certainly, and I think this is what's really important about sort of any vision for the waterfront, is intentionality. I think the success of this incredible untapped area, both where Quayside is located, that 12 acres, but also obviously the rest of the portlands. And I, you know, I do applaud the work that Waterford Toronto has done because I think that the key to success of these neighborhoods, first of all, we are all trying to build now mixed use communities, right? So we know that we need communities where people can live, work and play. And what I think Waterford Toronto has done in their sort of design elements and their thoughtfulness is, I think that the idea of Keyside was, I think we needed to put a stake in the ground and stand for something. And in that case, it was, let's use, let's be the home for these innovative technology ideas that help us think about creating smarter cities and how we live and, you know, how we learn from that and do more efficient things. You know, I think you don't know, you don't learn if you don't try, right? We learn more from failure than from success. But I think if you think about both from a destination standpoint, right? I mean, what has been delivered to date there is going to draw people from all over the city, if not from, you know, tourists from abroad. And I think that is the key, is to build with intention or to design with intention and then be very ambitious. And I think that's really the way we look at these locations, right? And I think that's what the government will buy into. What I think is important about it, and I mentioned this earlier, is the pieces need to fit together. And we did at the Board of Trade, we did a study on the waterfront called the Ripple Effect. And really the core of that was what we're looking for, what we'd like to see, and what think we're seeing in the waterfront Toronto plan is not either or, but end and end. So for example, we do see to use what Vic just, words Vic just used, live, work and play all of those elements on the waterfront. I want to focus a little bit on the work side of it, because I often feel that, and again, we're a business organization and we're somewhat worried about shrinking employment lands in the, in the, in the GTA. Um, where, so as the population expands, where are people going to work? Now we go to huge housing, severe housing shortage. We know that, but those, but as we build those houses, we need people to have a place to work and it can't be in sandwich shops and, you know, and in hotels and so on. It needs to be way beyond that. We need light manufacturing. We need some of those well-paying jobs in tech and so on. Then we need the employment lands available. So let's go back to the waterfront. You know, do we think we have enough there for a vibrant employment opportunity set, uh, for the people, a hundred thousand people who may well be living, you know, in this stretch of, of Toronto? It's a great question. And I think one of the, I'm going to call it the elephant in the room is actually the Unilever site, because ever since that proposal came along, that was being characterized as a major kind of back office space, 10, 12 million square feet of office space. And you bring back like five or six. Yes, that's right. That's right. And so I think that affected everyone's thinking to say, well, that's kind of where the office is going to be. So we'll pick up the housing piece and they will pick up the office piece and it will all work together. Plans are evolving over there. And I think, you know, our thinking is evolving here, but the piece we obviously need, which you're very keenly aware of because you talk about it as the transit piece. And so without that commitment, it is also hard to think about bringing a lot of employment down here. But I'm going to kick this one to Vic because I've said this to you before, Vic, we have the film studios and it's not talked about enough and it's a great employment center, a great industry. Absolutely. I mean, I think Chris is making a great point. The work that I think Water for Toronto is primarily focused on today and is leading in Oakland, Minnissing, you know, is very much focused, I think, you know, of course, because of the flood protection on the enjoy, like just big, ambitious park public realm. Of course, the housing will follow. There'll be some employment. You know, we know that the employment will take some time. But if we think about the broader precincts, there's Southport, which is another precinct south of the ship channel, where is, you know, we actually manage on behalf of the city, about 80 tenants generate significant revenue. You know, these are light manufacturing, you know, some just storage businesses, but light manufacturing, industrial uses, very important uses, employers that love being there because they're in close proximity, logistics businesses, close proximity to downtown. That is all zoned for that employment use. The scope for growth there. The scope for growth there. And then as Chris said, in the film industry, I mean, that's a place where, again, we've really put a flag in the ground on the film industry. It's an important sector for Toronto. Very, very important. We have a 34-acre studio already there with Pinewood, one of the leading developers of studios. We have another one that's coming on stream shortly on another piece of land. We have a third studio that fronts onto Lakeshore. So there is employment there. We need to do more. I think we need to do, as the neighborhood develops and transit gets there, we need to do, I think, start to converge more of the sectors there. So in other words, more office and more lighter commercial, but we're absolutely committed to it. And again, Waterfront Toronto is a great partner in that respect because they understand the importance of it as well.- Right. One of the things we haven't talked a bit about, but on the transit side is East Harbor, right? We're talking about a significant transit hub at East Harbor, which I think will be second only to Union Station as a transit hub in the city. So, you know, and it'll be the convergence of the GO line and Ontario line and so on. So, and hopefully the LRT. The LRT line, yes. So that would make it, that would really, it seems to me, be a game changer for this whole stretch of land because all the opportunities will become unlocked, I think, with that kind of access to transit. Now, we're probably, what, seven or eight years away, maybe 10 years away from the complete vision of all of that. grounds from broken on East Harbor. So that's built on the station. So that's pretty exciting in as a development in and of itself. Yeah. And I think as that transit becomes real, you know, everything has been zoned for mixed use. So there is the potential to start to shift the mix. It's been, you know, for reasons I've mentioned a bit more tilted towards residential, but it doesn't have to stay that way as we evolve, as the market evolves, as there's pressure and interest in commercial, we can bring commercial uses, uh, down here. Like this one that that we're sitting in was, you know, a vacant lot and now has an office building on it. So it's definitely possible. And I think, um, compliments, uh, some of the other things Vic was talking about some of the creative industries that we know are going to be part of our economy or we hope continue to be part of our economy. You know, and when you think about industry down here, I mean, it's funny when we moved in here, a number of people said, well, when do you think Redpath is going to be moving along because you're, you know, it blocks your view. I said, I hope never, never. Like this is a hugely important, uh, company for, you know, for the confectionery industry, the food industry in Southern Ontario, where the sugar comes from head paths right here. It's a really important asset and I hope it never leaves. And to me, it's also one thing I was going to say from a tourism perspective, I'm always, I'm always watching when the ships come in with the sugar from the Caribbean, all the tourists stand and watch, you know, the unloading. It's a great thing to see. It's real stuff, right? It's not just some kind of Disney experience, you know, entertainment experience. It's authentic. It, you know, if I can jump in Giles, it just, you know, it leads to this idea that I think that we are very focused and intentional on in the portlands, which is that we really do need to appreciate that we can coexist with industry and heavy industry. And I think there are lessons to be learned from Europe where they have no choice, right? Geography is scarce. Yeah, you can sip a nice Chardonnay in Rotterdam while a container ship is being undirted 50 meters away. And it's not unusual. In fact, it's something to see. Well, you see that in Halifax as well, interestingly, you know, right where the port is, the same kinds of things. I mean, we built a park called Leslie Looko Park on Leslie Street, just towards the gateway to Tommy Thompson Park. And it sits between Lafarge and Strata Aggregates. And so, yeah, no, that was tough. And, you know, of course, the industry didn't like it at first, but we, you know, we did our bed. We were committed to it. We've worked with them. We've had no complaints. It's been a year now. And in fact, some of the employees, you know, come and enjoy lunch now, right? I was going to say, it's kind of an interesting... Remember, there are real people working in these jobs, right? In these industries. Well, that's right. And, you know, and again, I mean, the cement complex there is hugely important. It's hugely important. For, you know, the construction all across the GTA. The Bar City. You know, you think of the number of trucks that are not on the road because you've got the ships coming in. I want to come back to the whole question of vision, though. We've talked about many of the elements. We haven't talked about the port itself, but let's just move along to the vision. Because we've had experts from Sydney, Australia, and other ports around the world come and talk about what they've got versus what we have. And it turned out that many of these great cities have actually still got a bit of a problem with this disjointed nature of their port, right? Their port land, or their waterfront, where it's a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and it doesn't really hang together that well. Even the last expert we had him from Sydney said, and it's not quite as gelled as you think it is, but here's an opportunity to have a more gelled vision for our waterfront, learning from other experiences. But talk a little bit about vision and how the pieces fit together from, you know, from west to east. Well, I think, you know, I think the vision has always been to make this a really special waterfront. And we have been looking at some of those other cities from around the world and said, you know, this could be one of the greatest waterfronts. It's a good waterfront, but it's not at the level of the truly great ones. But I think we have all the bones. We have a great harbor. We've got, you know, great land. We've got the beginnings of a great park network. We're lacking some of the other things that would make it great. Certainly destinations are one of those, and that's a piece we're working on now with our destination study to look at how can we bring more people here, large numbers of people. You know, we have focused a lot in the past on outdoor activities, places like Harborfront, which are mostly seasonal, and they're wonderful places. We need the things that are here year-round so that we can have the rest of that ecosystem that relies on customers year-round. Well, we have to replace redevelopment. I mean, I'll be honest. I mean, at the board, we're big fans. of that, or mainly thought it was long overdue. Governments over the last 20 years have been looking for some way to modernize and replace what we, you know, was really getting pretty old and shabby, uh, with something that would be dramatic and new and attract a lot of visitors, uh, to the waterfront. And, you know, I think there may be, there may be different views about, about the thermal project, but to me, it is a kind of modern version of what we had. And, uh, you add together, you know, the science center. wow, now you've got two attractions on the waterfront that are like pinkers. That's right. And you go along and you've got, you know, others as you go along, but it starts to hang together better, it seems to me. Yeah. You need those clusters and you need them at different locations. And I think Ontario Place will be one of those big clusters. I think the Science Centre is going to be a great boon to the waterfront. And if we can build something like that on the east side, we have most of the pieces we need to stitch it together. What do you think, though? What would be, you know, in your sense, something similar to that on the east side? Well, you know, I keep wondering, we have so many great arts institutions in this city, but none of them are down on the waterfront. And many of them have very large collections, the majority of which sit in storage. Could we create some sort of a share? Yes, the AGO, the ROM. Could we create some sort of a satellite facility here that brings some of their material down? And could it even partner with some great institutions from around the world? So Amsterdam did this with the Hart Museum. It was a partnership between a local institution and the Hermitage in Russia. after Ukraine war, they shifted it and it's now a partnership with Pompidou and the National Art Gallery of Britain. Could we do something like that where we can have cultural exchange with some of our stuff that's great, the ROM is world-class. It could partner with any of those institutions just as well and bring Canadian culture into contact with those other ones. Could we have a sort of group of seven museum down here? Is that something that people really know about Canada and associate with Canada, you come to Toronto, you can't actually see it. Yes, you can get up to court, right? And that's fantastic. But could some of that be down here? Like, I think our own Canadian identity could be so much more expressed on this waterfront. And this seems like the right time to do that with everything happening south of the border. Like, so I think like that's kind of the vision. Is your land set aside for something like that? There's a lot. It's a land, right? I mean, we have our side. Yeah, there's a lot. And on Equamen Minnising, Vic knows this, we have lots of development blocks that can have residential, but they have big footprints. They can have a big institution on the ground floor. It's flexible. Yeah, I would add, I think, Giles, just, you know, the one thing that we, I think, need to do is try to create connectivity between all of these different aspects of the 10 kilometer waterfront as part of the vision of it. And, you know, I think we're, you know, whether you support Thermae or not, I think what we're seeing now, and I think there's sort of a recognition that we need destinations to bring people down, but we also need a waterfront that serves everybody. So there has to be free and public programming that's accessible to all. And I think we can't forget what sort of made the waterfront dynamic 25 years ago, when some of us might have been coming down here at a younger age, which is the central waterfront, the harbourfront centre and supports that. Right. So I think, you know, that's feeling a little tired. And I think, you know, the harbourfront centre needs. But I'm sensing a bit of new energy there too, though. Absolutely. Well, listen, hats off to the board because bringing that group of all of us together as CEOs of organizations that have an interest in the waterfront, all agencies of some form or another, a few private companies as well, that takes a lot of effort. I think we're at a point in time now where organizations that wouldn't have sat at the same table together are now together. Yeah, and it's usually a gelling of business work. Yeah, I feel that too. Yeah, this is a great conversation, but I wanted to get back to the mobility piece. How can we use marine more effectively here to take the pressure off the road? I'll start with you, Chris. Okay. Well, I think I'll talk about the marine transportation because we are working to pilot a east-west water taxi service, which we see as a step towards creating a sea bus system that could run in a circuit around the harbor and start to connect up better all of these different existing and emerging destinations. We just opened Bedasagay Park. It's not served by a streetcar yet, but it could easily be served by a water taxi and by a sea bus. So we could start to bring large numbers of people there, not with their cars, and in advance of the transit. And that circuit could connect up with that hovercraft stop. So you could start to bring people in from farther away. They could transfer onto a water taxi and suddenly have access to the whole harbor quite vast without dealing with, you know, the traffic concerns that we all know happen here. So I see that as an exciting piece. And, you know, I do think Therm and the Science Center, there's going to be a huge critical mass of people there. Let's get those folks out here. You know, the Dasa Gay Park is actually a great place to learn about science because it's all about flood management. and imagine the science center being able to do programming over there and take their students on a little boat, on a water taxi and run them right over there and do a program and go back. Like that would just be so exciting for the harbor. Great for them as an organization. Great for, for our two organizations. Um, so I think there's a huge amount of potential via connections to make this. Well, not Marine basically. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I mean, I would just agree with that and and you know it's great to see the waterfront trial when i saw the presentation i think actually here yeah i was i thought this is just brilliant like the idea of a sea bus route is just like an it would become i think one of the top tourist attractions like it's well but it's a city from the water it's an automatic right so i think a that's great i think that we do need to take advantage of more commuting opportunities um using the water i just want to talk for a minute though about your first point which i think we play a role in at create and you know i mean we're not responsible for the the port traffic the port authority is that but again they're another partner of of ours in the port uh we have land protected for port uses right many of our tenants are those very businesses that rely on the port and so we're improving the dock wall we're absolutely we are we have a long-term program to do that we have awareness now by the city that this This is an important city public asset that needs to be maintained. And, and so we're going to embark on that program, but where, you know, that, that land is not going anywhere. It's designated for those uses and we hope they can be maximized. I mean, we want to see innovation as well though. Well, we don't want people to just spread out, like want them to be innovative. Let's maximize again, the utility of those. Well, I think there is an opportunity for more, more concentrated approach, right? I mean, people look at Chicago and they'll say there's, you know, I don't know how many, like 40 kilometers of employment lands that can be used, and they have a huge advantage over Toronto. But I agree with you, I think a more effective use of the land we do have, but let's make sure it is used for that.- Absolutely.- I think there's huge economic opportunity there.- Absolutely.- Okay. That's all the time we have, but thank you for a great conversation.- Thank you, this has been great.- Yeah, a lot of fun.- Well, there's a lot happening, and it's always nice to talk about great opportunities, and I think that's what we have here.- And you guys are doing a great job, so anytime you want us back, We'd be happy to reprise this and talk about anything you want, Travis. Excellent. Yeah, we'll do it again for sure. Thank you. Thank you. That's all for this episode of Toronto Talks. Don't forget to join us on September 29th for our annual Waterfront Symposium. It's a perfect place to connect with leaders like Vic and Chris. Visit BOT.com to get your tickets. The event will sell out. Until next time, Toronto, keep talking. Our voice drives meaningful change.