It was a momentous public artwork intended to brighten a downtown community and beautify a controversial transit project.

But 15 months after Metrolinx announced it had awarded the commission of a $4-million record-breaking mural for the Davenport Diamond rail bridge to a local artist, the transit agency quietly cancelled the piece in an effort to rein in costs.

Alex McLeod, the Toronto digital artist who designed the mural, now says the agency is refusing to fully compensate him for his work, while local residents are fuming that one of the few attractive features of the otherwise intrusive rail overpass coming to their neighbourhood has been stripped away.

“They appear to be cancelling anything and everything that could have made what will otherwise be a very detrimental project into something beneficial for the community,” said Erin Pleet, chair of Options for Davenport, a community group formed around Metrolinx’s plans for the overpass.

“Art was a way to help what’s going to be a very large and tall bridge work in our community.”

Metrolinx hasn’t publicly announced the cancellation. Pleet and local elected officials told the Star they learned of the decision from a reporter.

According to Metrolinx spokesperson Anne Marie Aikins, the mural was scrapped as a result of a change in agency policy. In 2016, Metrolinx, the provincial Crown corporation responsible for transportation in the GTHA, approved a guideline that said 1 per cent of transit projects’ eligible construction costs should be spent on public art. The agency has now eliminated that policy.

“In order to balance our community objectives with the need to manage costs, Metrolinx made the decision earlier this year to shift the focus from integrated art in our capital projects to a more cost effective strategy,” said Aikins.

She said the previous integrated art policy is being replaced with a new program that will attempt to leverage “community, municipal and private sector partnerships” to create public art.

She said public realm improvements like art and walking and cycling paths “remain critically important to both the public and Metrolinx” and will be part of a tender issued as part of the Davenport project sometime “in the near future.”

But because the policy is still in development “we cannot say what funds will be invested in public art moving forward,” she said.

The Davenport mural isn’t the only project affected by the policy change. According to a March 2018 agency board presentation, at that time Metrolinx had committed up to $25 million for 34 individual artworks to be built as part of 18 different transit projects across the GTHA.

Aikins said that “certain projects” like art planned for Kipling station, Eglinton Crosstown LRT stations, and the Union Station Bus Terminal will proceed. Others, such as those slated for the Rutherford and Cooksville GO stations, will fall under the new “community investment benefits” policy.

The decision to scrap the 1-per-cent integrated art policy came months after the election of the Ontario PC’s to provincial government, which oversees Metrolinx. Since forming government the party has moved to trim budgets at provincial agencies in order to address what Premier Doug Ford describes as the “financial mess” left behind by his Liberal predecessor.

In an emailed statement Barbara Mottram, a spokesperson for Transportation Minister Caroline Mulroney, didn’t directly answer a question about whether the government supported Metrolinx slashing public art spending.

“We are delivering on our commitment to protect the core services that matter most and that includes building new subways and expanding GO Transit services across the network. We are focused on getting people to work, to home and to family faster – these are the things that matter,” Mottram said.

Metrolinx announced the commission of McLeod’s mural, entitled “Secret Park Gate,” in February 2018.

At the time, Metrolinx CEO Phil Verster hailed the work as “fantastic public art by a world-class Toronto artist,” and the agency said in a press release it was an example of “Metrolinx’s investments in improving public space” as part of the Davenport project.

McLeod, a 35-year-old Scarborough native who attended OCAD and Ryerson universities and now lives north of the Davenport area, beat out international artistic heavyweights like America’s Frank Stella and Great Britain’s Martin Creed for the commission.

Renderings of his mural show it would depict detailed fantastical landscapes that also take into account the neighbourhood around it.

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According to Metrolinx the work would have been the largest digitally printed image in the world, and adorned the entire length of both sides of the Davenport Diamond Guideway, a 1.4-kilometre elevated rail bridge Metrolinx plans to build between Bloor and Dupont Sts., just west of Lansdowne Ave.

The guideway would take the north-south Barrie GO Transit rail line over the east-west CP rail tracks that also run through that part of town, eliminating an at-grade intersection of the two rail lines known as the Davenport Diamond. The crossing currently impacts GO service by forcing the agency’s commuter trains to wait while CP freight traffic passes.

Metrolinx says the overpass is critical to its plans to increase service on the Barrie line, which serves commuter communities north of Toronto, by as early as 2025.

The plan to build a 8.5-metre high heavy-rail overpass through the heart of a stable residential neighbourhood provoked opposition from locals since it was revealed in 2015. But elected officials said they worked with residents and Metrolinx for years to ensure art and other amenities were included in order to offset the project’s negative impacts.

“This was always a controversial project from day one, and the community worked hard to make sure that it was going to benefit everybody, that we could have something that was going to be beneficial for the local community as well as the communities (north of Toronto) that it provides transit for,” said Councillor Ana Bailão (Ward 9, Davenport).

She said McLeod’s mural was key to getting a level of community buy-in for the project, and transforming it into something other than “a big piece of cement eight meters up in the sky.”

The councillor said she was concerned Metrolinx will also scrap other public realm improvements such as cycling and walking connections that were supposed to be constructed with the overpass.

Those elements were originally part of the tender for the Davenport guideway itself, but were later removed from the procurement process. Last month, Infrastructure Ontario announced it had awarded the $175-million tender to design, build, and finance the guideway to a private consortium called Graham Commuter Rail Solutions.

A representative for McLeod said he was informed in June by Metrolinx’s engineering consultant that the agency had cancelled his mural, and that the decision came as a surprise.

“This turn of events was really hard for us. The work was created for everyone,” said McLeod, whose studio is about two kilometres from the Davenport Diamond site.

“It's demoralizing to our arts community, as well as the city as a whole.”

While McLeod has received some payment, Samantha Viarruel, who manages his public art commissions, said Metrolinx owes the artist “hundreds of thousands of dollars” for work he did in the months between when he was awarded the commission and when it was cancelled.

She said he worked “day and night” designing the mural, and had already submitted the digital files required to fabricate the artwork. Because the mural was site-specific and Metrolinx had already widely publicized it as part of its plans, McLeod can’t simply sell it to someone else, she argued.

“They could produce that work tomorrow,” Viarruel said.

Discussions between McLeod and Metrolinx are ongoing.

“Metrolinx will manage its obligations with respect to compensation for work completed consistent with provisions of his contract,” said Aikins.

Ben Spurr is a Toronto-based reporter covering transportation. Reach him by email at bspurr@thestar.ca or follow him on Twitter: @BenSpurr

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