It’s a long way from Texas to Toronto, but for mega-developer Gerald Hines, it’s like coming home.

Houston-based Hines is the latest international builder to appear on the waterfront, where, aided and abetted by one of the world’s best-known architects, Cesar Pelli, he has plans for an $800 million mixed-use neighbourhood.

Hines, whose family hails from Nova Scotia, sings the praises of Toronto, Canada, and Waterfront Toronto, whose selection process he lauds as “the most professional I’ve ever seen.”

Given that he has worked in more than 100 cities including Barcelona, Washington and Shanghai, that’s good to gear. Of course, his firm won the competition, so naturally he’s well disposed to Waterfront Toronto.

On the other hand, it must be said that the scheme prepared by the Hines/Pelli team bodes well for the future of the city and its waterfront. Though design details have yet to be drawn up, the idea calls for low-rise development — condos, offices, retail, cultural — organized around transit and a series of short streets. The site, dubbed Bayside, extends east from Sherbourne to Parliament Sts. between Queens Quay and the lake.

Also central to the proposal is public space; it will include at least one green roof and the glass-enclosed Bayside Hall, which will connect Bayside to Sherbourne Common — the park/water treatment facility that opens next month. Bonnycastle St., which will be extended south from Queens Quay, will become the main drag of the new neighbourhood.

“We’re interested in places, not projects,” says New York architect Stanton Eckstut, well known for Manhattan’s Battery Park complex. “Public spaces have the emphasis here; buildings are the means.”

Speaking of buildings, not only will they be designed by different architects to avoid the monolithic quality of many such mega-developments, they will be low-rise.

“There’s a clear desire for a smaller scale,” says Eckstut. “It will be eight to 12 storeys.

“I don’t think the public likes huge towers on the waterfront,” Hines adds. “They hog the view.”

View or not, many Torontonians would agree they hate tall buildings, no matter where they are. On the other hand, there’s never any shortage of people willing to live in them.

“This is where we’re headed,” says Hines, a builder of 60 years: “multi-use, sustainable, central-city, transit-oriented development. Good urban transportation is the key. People want more disposable time; they don’t want to spend two to three hours sitting in a car every day. But you’ve got to have transit within walking distance.”

According to him, that’s about 150 metres, the length of a city block. And although cars will have access to Bayside, pedestrians will “dominate,” says Eckstut.

The scheme has been approved by the executive committee, and goes before full city council next week. Chances are it will pass easily; who would fight success?

Although most Torontonians remain resolutely unimpressed by the waterfront’s vast potential, to the rest of the world, revitalization is a no-brainer.

“The opportunities here are fantastic,” Pelli enthuses. “It’s a negative hole in Toronto now, but that will all change.”

As always, patience will be required. This is a 10- to 15-year project; the first condos won’t be ready until 2014 at the earliest. By the time the dust settles, Bayside is expected to have 1,700 residential units and 2,400 jobs. The water’s-edge promenade will also be part of the neighbourhood, along with other public amenities.

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Even now, some will laugh at the idea of spending almost $1 billion on a sustainable neighbourhood at the foot of Parliament St. But funny, as that may sound, it’s happening.

Christopher Hume can be reached at chume@thestar.ca

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