Remember the Yorkville rock — that 650-tonne hunk of Muskoka granite transported in 137 pieces on 11 flatbed trucks to the heart of Toronto as the iconic element of a 1990s park?

Didn’t like the idea one bit. Herb Pirk and the city’s parks department had lost their minds in the midst of a recession, I figured.

Imagine the outrage — a precursor to the current uproar over the $12,000 pink umbrellas and two rocks costing $500,000 at Sugar Beach on Toronto’s waterfront.

As a new city hall reporter in the early 1990s, the ridiculous idea of spending $283,000 to transport the rock from near Gravenhurst to the middle of hippyville was an irresistible story. And one of the politicos more than willing to stir the pot was Councillor Tom Jakobek, sounding every bit like Rob Ford does, sober or drunk.

“What’s wrong with simply laying some sod and, for now, planting a few bushes?” asked the 1990s mouth that roared.

Yes, years earlier city council had approved a park to replace the parking lot behind the old University Cinemas just north of Bloor, above the subway, but the expenditure didn’t look good in a recession, Jakobek argued. And who could disagree.

“It’s too late to cancel the mad decision” to build the park, “but it isn’t too late to scale down the mad decision and save $1 million or more. It sounds great, I know — let’s tear down a parking lot and put up a park — but these are not the ’60s and life is not a song.”

Great quote. But within three years the reviews started coming in from international juries — and how wrong the opponents were.

Compare that to Mayor Rob Ford at city council this week, slamming an expenditure already made on the waterfront, in a park already established and earning awards for design, and providing citizens with days of joy and pleasure.

“A true example of a complete waste of taxpayers’ money,” the mayor said, adding he can’t find Sugar Beach. All he sees on his daily drive in to city hall from Etobicoke is gridlock and condos.

The Yorkville rock survived — to great acclaim and, now, affection. The umbrellas and rocks at Sugar Beach are in good company, already garnering awards.

One learns, over time, that claims of government waste are not always accurate. Cheap is rarely good and often challenged to deliver enduring value. Sometimes, the planners and designers and civic officials do get it right.

Frankly, rare is the politician willing to go on the campaign trail seeking re-election with a record of defending $283,000 for rocks on a beach. But consider this: Would it make you feel better if the granite had been ground into slabs and laid along the beach — a process that would likely cost more.

Fact is, city councillors have many reasons to embrace what’s happening on the waterfront. In just over 15 years, the derelict disastrous mess of a port lands is slowly being reclaimed and remade into a semblance of habitable, attractive precincts.

And, unlike other worthy civic initiatives like affordable housing or transit, this is being accomplished with two-thirds of the cost guaranteed by the federal and provincial governments.

The mayor may rage against Sugar Beach, but the money for that particular project was earmarked by the federal government.

The mayor may rail against waterfront redevelopment in general, but he should recognize that every word uttered weakens the negotiating position of Waterfront Toronto when its makes deals with developers, and does nothing to encourage the federal government to pump more money into future initiatives there.

When then prime minister Jean Chrétien, premier Mike Harris and mayor Mel Lastman arrived by boat in the docklands and announced the astonishing partnership to revitalize the waterfront, it was almost too good to be true.

Halfway through the 30-year horizon, the changes are at times breathtaking, and always surprising.

Some $1.5 billion in government spending to remediate the land and service it for development, put in parks, protect sites from flooding and the like has yielded $2.6 billion in private-sector spending. When nearby projects are tabulated, the impact is worth $9.6 billion in investment. Taxes generated total $1.4 billion and counting.

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The list of improvements is long and impressive and growing. Councillor Paula Fletcher aptly sums up our penchant for embracing low-cost options in the guise of public accountability:

Too many “know the cost of everything, but the value of nothing.”

Royson James usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Email: rjames@thestar.ca

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