In the early 1960s, the City razed several blocks of 19th century Victorian housing and constructed three 16-storey, Y-shaped, public housing towers known as Moss Park Apartments. In the 1970s, a fourth tower was added. Under-utilized parking lots partially surround these towers at grade. To the south a sizable park is well used by tenants and the local community.

In 1991, the Province of Ontario’s Ministry of Housing funded a community-consulting process called the Moss Park Community Development Project. A working committee was formed that included building residents, the City, Homes First Society and the Supportive Housing Coalition of Toronto (both providers of non-profit housing), and the writer as the committee’s planning consultant. Two phases of work were identified: Phase I calls for the refurbishing of existing housing towers; Phase II proposes infilling the super-block’s parking lots with 220 new, affordable housing units, which would eventually pay for Phase I.

The Urban Design Guidelines set out in Phase I have, in part, been executed by architect Ted Sievenpiper and include new lobbies and amenity spaces.

Phase II calls for a new system of public streets, lanes, and pedestrian strollways to create eight new building sites. Different housing typologies were developed to respond to the particular size, shape, and location of each site, and include row houses, stacked row houses, several smaller apartment houses, and a larger courtyard apartment block. The plan sets a community/cultural centre in the park to serve the entire neighbourhood. It was proposed that families, currently living on the upper floors of the deteriorating towers, be given first choice to move into the new housing at grade. As older units became vacant, they were to be refurbished to house adults on marginal incomes.

The partial implementation of Phase I enjoys a somewhat peculiar relationship to the existing site plan due to the cancellation of Phase II, which remains a theoretical planning “vision.”

Paul Reuber