The Path Forward

In conversation with: Drew Sinclair, Jonathan Tinney, Gerardo Paez

The Beltline Trail is a tricky one to define. It’s a long, urban trail, but because of the city’s rapid growth, it’s broken into smaller segments. The former railway is a magnificent piece of urban renewal, but it’s unfinished. It’s an absolute asset for those who live nearby, but not enough of a draw for those who don’t.

“The Beltline has for a longtime had this potential to connect east-west across the city through a priority transportation corridor, meaning its priority is not moving cars but moving people,” says SvN principal Drew Sinclair. “Where its potential hasn’t been fully realized is where these key gaps exist.”

For SvN, a landscape design, architecture and planning practice, this truth about the Beltline Trail formed a significant piece of the puzzle in designing the landscapes at Beltline Yards: How to stitch together new buildings with an existing green space? And how to improve a part of that green space in a way that catalyzes future improvements beyond the boundaries of the site? And so the story of the Beltline Yards and its landscapes becomes one of connection: connecting what Beltline Yards will be with the potential of what the Beltline Trail could become.

The potential? An urban trail that forms a full loop through Toronto, connecting the many neighbourhoods it touches. Speaking with SvN, it’s clear the opportunity for Beltline Yards is to lead by example by creating a landscape-led masterplan that seamlessly flows between trail and neighbourhood.

“The trail is something quite different from Beltline Yards,” Sinclair continues. “The trail is a linear public space that’s about movement, it’s not serving an industrial purpose. The way we’ve been able to navigate between those two design languages is to imagine the industrial underlay and the organic overlay.” So for example, the industrial underlay might be something like a playground, designed to echo the language of 19th century industry and railroads. Or the brick chimney, standing next to an amphitheatre in the park, a relic of the past that will be embraced as a wayfinding landmark for Beltline Yards.

To get a better understanding of the organic overlay, on the other hand, meet Gerardo Paez, the soft spoken landscape architecture lead at SvN who designed the landscapes to simultaneously provide intimacy and create expansiveness. He paints a picture of wildflower meadows, open lawns and quiet moments among the trees that provide a varied environment for the community, while also creating a natural transition between trail and neighbourhood. “We wanted a place that’s flexible enough to kick a ball with a toddler or read a book on a bench, but also to have an event with different members of the community,” he says.