A new public park featuring a beach and a 360-degree viewing platform is coming to Toronto’s industrial waterfront.
On Wednesday, city officials announced that the concept and design for Leslie Slip Lookout Park, which will be located on the Martin Goodman Trail in Toronto’s industrial Port Lands, had been chosen.
The nearly two-acre park will feature a public beach that will “create a new multi-use community destination” in the city, officials said, and will also include a 360-degree viewing platform that overlooks the city’s skyline and Toronto’s ship channel.
Toronto Mayor John Tory said that he hopes to have shovels in the ground in March, but it may be a couple of years before the park is open to the public.
“It’s going to be a wonderful park,” he said. “It’s going to have big dunes that have a great view of both the lake and the city itself.”
In addition to providing a space for residents to gather, officials say the park will also host year-round programing, including concerts, art exhibits and pop-up events.
The contract for the park was awarded to Claude Cormier + Associés (CC+A), the same company responsible for Toronto’s Berczy Park and Sugar Beach.
“The park will aim to deliver an unfamiliar vantage of being immersed in a landscape that is oversized, brutal, and surreal,” Claude Cormier, landscape architect and founding partner of CC+A, said in a statement issued Wednesday.
“Leslie Slip Lookout Park embraces the look and feel of its industrial context, re-identifying the landscape of labour and work into one of play and recreation.”
Public consultations for the park design will begin in February.
